Is Antivirus Software Over-Cautious?

Antivirus software not only provides corrective computer repair functionality to fix infected files but it also takes preventive action, offering inbuilt computer support services by monitoring your computer's processes for suspicious activity. If it picks up anything it regards as a little bit devious, you'll usually be the first to know.

However, as the community of nefarious virus developers improve their technology, the number of processes that are regarded as suspicious is increasing. You may be prompted by your antivirus software about the suspicious activity of a program, and asked whether action should be taken against it. You can give the go-ahead to take action with the click of your mouse, but if you're familiar with the application and you know there's nothing wrong with the process, then you can tell the antivirus software to ignore it.

If there's a lot of what your antivirus application considers suspicious activity going on, you may be prompted about the behaviors of various programs again and again and again. You know they're all perfectly reasonable processes, so you give the go-ahead for each of them to continue operating. Your ever vigilant antivirus software dutifully logs and informs you of each of these "false positives" and what was once regarded as a great means of preventing malicious software by virus authors from turning your computer into a zombie now becomes very, very annoying. As the prompts keep coming, you get sick of reading them, you let your guard down and you click the "Accept" button one time too many. This time, it wasn't a false positive and the antivirus software was right on the money. You only have yourself to blame and suddenly, your computer is very ill.

This problem has been compounded in recent years by the changing motives of the malicious programmer. Viruses used to be written by amateurs and practical jokers eager to have a little fun and cause a few headaches. The destructive nature of the virus was usually obvious to the computer user as soon as the computer was infected by the smart ass. Now, organized crime syndicates eager to get your credit card details employ qualified professionals to see what kind of information they can obtain by sneakily installing keyloggers and Trojans and secret backdoor applications on your computer. It may be not only possible, but likely, that a virus on your computer has been authored by a programmer funded by the criminal community.

Little wonder your antivirus software is so eager with all those warnings. If it fails to spot a nasty piece of code, next thing you know your bank account could be drained to the point of overdraft and your credit card has been maxed out by the Mafia. You have no idea how this could have happened because the viral application that sent your financial details to the criminals still resides undetected on your hard drive.

So bear in mind that your antivirus software has your best interests at heart. If you feel the urge to turn off those annoying alerts, don't do so by disabling the antivirus software altogether. See if the application has any alternatives that will offer the same or similar measures of protection. If it doesn't, you can probably find other antivirus software, either free to use or on the market, that doesn't employ this technique. The problem is so pronounced today that many virus protection developers are making changes to their software so that it's not quite so demanding of your attention. But be careful to note the golden rule that you shouldn't have more than one memory-resident virus protection solution installed on a single computer at any given time. Your new software may prompt you to uninstall the old software during its first installation.
TechSpoon is a computer repair services provider bringing enterprise computer and network support services to small business in a personal and reliable manner at a fraction of industry costs. They also assist consumers at home with Convenient in home computer repair service for their personal computers for computer repair software , Computer Repair Services, Computer Consulting, Computer Help, computer virus issues and more. With technicians located nationally computer repair is a phone call away. Computer help can be reached at 877-TECH 101 for computer repair .