When the odd few scan positive and the majority come back with a clean result, I always presume false positives on the part of the odd-scanners-out.Ĭlick to expand.Thanks a lot, britekguy. But it is not unusual for the odd scanner or two to flag something that the majority of the scanners don't. You can always run a VirusTotal scan afterward if you want to be really, really careful. I assume safety for that matter for Windows-based programs of wide renown sourced directly from their makers, though virtually any security suite will scan the exe or msi installers when you download them anyway. When well-known software (regardless of OS platform) becomes infected, and it has happened, but rarely, word spreads like wildfire in the tech press and on forums such as these.įor Linux based programs of wide renown unless there's some online chatter about an issue I would assume safety. Viruses and malware, while not absolutely absent from Linux environments, are also not nearly as common as they are in Windows-based PC environments. Results for Linux based software could very easily come up as false positives simply because what the scan engines are looking at is not what they think they're looking at under typical circumstances. Most virus scanners (I'd say nearly all) focus on Windows-based software. But seeing these potential malwares in red (and having had a virus in the past) spooks me.ġ) With their being no guarantees, does this yWriter6 look safe to download? (I won't hold anybody to anything.)Ģ) Is good/safe to use in addition to VirusTotal? ģ) Any other suggestions about how to make a rational decision when VirusTotal turns up just one detection in a scan?Ĥ) How to determine if something is a false positive or not? Like I've been told here: consider the source and use VirusTotal.Ī lot of writers use this yWriter6 software and no one complains about viruses.

Which a friend linked me this as it possibly being dangerous on Windows (despite it being the Linux download): On this, bkav came up with: W32.HfsIemusi.

Trapmine came up with this: .scoreĪnd the Zipfile for Linux produced this VirusTotal outcome: Trapmine (the AI scanner) came up with this: .score I just want to get this yWriter6 writing software. Cookiegal has already been helping me with this (thanks!) but I still have questions.

Ywriter5