My antivirus software complains that Pale Moon is malware?

Frequently Asked Questions about the Pale Moon browser and their answers.
User avatar
Moonchild
Pale Moon guru
Pale Moon guru
Posts: 35402
Joined: 2011-08-28, 17:27
Location: Motala, SE
Contact:

My antivirus software complains that Pale Moon is malware?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2011-09-26, 18:03

My antivirus software complains that Pale Moon is a trojan, keylogger, PUP, PUA, ...

Some Antivirus software is a little too paranoid in their scanning for potentially dangerous programs. It seems scanning with what is called "heuristics" is still something extremely difficult for people to implement properly, and as a result, some AV scanners are rather paranoid whenever a complex piece of optimized software is encountered, especially if it interacts with multiple other programs (like the plugin container does).

Pale Moon has been scanned by several leading and independent software distributors and found to be 100% clean and safe.

If your anti-malware package keeps complaining and your system is otherwise clean, please report it to your security software vendor as a false positive. Reporting it to the browser author serves no purpose as it's the malware detector's scanning engine that needs fixing.
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
"Linux makes everything difficult." -- Lyceus Anubite

jcdenton2k

Re: My antivirus software complains that Pale Moon is malwar

Unread post by jcdenton2k » 2012-03-04, 18:01

This is a known issue with really poor antivirus suites such as:
Symantec products
Norton products
McAfee products
Other poorly-designed antivirus or malware detection suites/products by vendors in 3rd-world countries.

This may also happen if a release is brand new and your antivirus relies heavily on "cloud detection", flagging Pale Moon as suspicious because the new version is not used by a lot of people yet.

Locked