Microsoft OneCare said that Gmail was a virus. Oops!

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 14 November 2006 19:26

Your IT - Entertainment

Another day in the world of anti-virus and Internet Security software, and another false positive with a legitimate site branded as being contaminated by a virus. Is it a conspiracy or just an innocent mistake?

As reported at ZDNet and elsewhere around the Web, Microsoft’s OneCare anti-virus service dubbed the Gmail website as being infected by a virus called BAT/BWG-A.

This affected quite a large number of users who complained in the OneCare and Gmail forums, so with the speed of a bat out of hell, Microsoft apologised publicly for the error, claiming a fault in the anti-virus signature updates and revised their AV signatures, promising that it wouldn’t happen again and revising procedures in an effort to ensure their promises can be kept.

Apparently the problem arose mainly for OneCare users who decided to update to Microsoft’s shiny new browser, IE7, but in typical pass-the-buck style, Microsoft hinted that it was really Google’s fault by claiming that they just misunderstood changes that Google made to its Gmail service.

Of course, it isn’t the first time that false positives have plagued computer software. It happens all the time with our spam filters, while McAfee and Microsoft have had their security software make similar false positive claims in the recent past.

For example, McAfee’s software claimed, last March, that MS Office was a “low risk virus”, which is a verdict that Open Office users and some regulatory agencies would probably agree with, while Microsoft’s Windows Defender anti-spyware software said in February that Symantec’s Internet Security software was a Trojan.

The funny thing is, quite a few people would have agreed with that one, too.

And as for Gmail being a virus? Well, Google keeps on growing and growing, but as long as Google tries as hard as possible to stick to its ‘don’t be evil’ mantra and gives us data portability as promised at a recent Web 2.0 conference in the US, I’ll continue thinking of Google as mostly being the good guys.

For now, anyway.