This website uses the term viral as part of its name, assuming viewers see viral as a good term denoting the ability to spread a message from one place to another, creating a large audience. But as we all know, viral is also associated with virus, which is a bad term. A virus in a human or animal can cause a disease or worse, a virus in a computer can cause many problems from the annoying to the fatal.

Most computer users nowadays have installed anti-virus programs to protect their machines from computer viruses. The problem with all these programs is they are very capable of producing false results, which can be costly. No program promises 100% accuracy. All programs can produce either false positive or false negative results.

A false positive is a result which claims there is virus present when in fact there is none. A false negative result claims there is no danger present when in fact there is danger present.

Fortunately there are ways to check if the positive warning you receive from your embedded antivirus program is a false positive result. If you receive a message from your antivirus program that there is a virus present on your machine it might be worth a further check. Wander over to either of these two websites and run a second scan: virustool or novirusthanks. The resuts you get from either of these sites is more authoritative than the results from any single program.

What justifies the claim the results are more authoritative? Because both virustool and novirusthanks check their results against dozens of other virus check programs. Something like 20 or 30 or forty other virus scans — in several languages no less. I lost count. And since both programs change once in a while and you might not read this post until some time well after it is written I do not want the numbers pinned down. Just assume the results will be checked against many other programs.

All for free.

Of course you can check for false negatives by running all your files through these websites. But that would be an endless, tedious task.

Before you do something that could be costly and possibly harm your computer, check out any reports of the presence of viruses with either of these websites and rest easier knowing better results.

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Tags: anti-virus programs, false negative, false positive, viral