Proposed Class Action Suit Against...

[Brutal 164]

Proposed Class Action Suit Against anti-virus companies - We could include all major anti-virus providers.

 

Something like this takes planning, action, and the right kind of lawyer.

 

I am not saying that I have the skillset to put this together, but I am betting that someone here does possess the requisite skills.

 

What does the suit attack?

 

Pretty much every bot we make is flagged by various av programs. We constantly fight a battle in trying to educate people that our programs are clean and safe.

 

This means that we spend time doing it, which means it costs us money to do (monetary loss)

 

Additionally, because of those so called "false positives" our business reputation is damaged... Meaning that people choose not to do business with us because of said false positive (additional monetary loss with certainty of future losses because that buyer will never buy from us again).

 

So, we are able to show that real/tangible damage is being caused with a resulting financial loss.

 

So that should cover the first prong of a suit of this type... Is there tangible loss. Yes there is.

 

Next prong - Is this loss being caused by intentional misrepresentation/accusation,  neglect, gross negligence. - Yes, it is.

 

The argument - The av company has for nothing more than expediance and a self-perceived safety net chosen to automatically flag certain actions as dangerous without anything more than an assumption based upon old/outdated data.

 

In other words, the av company makes a consious decision to not actually check any given program for actual malicious code but rather to simply make the accusation and let the customer and the software developer hash it out. (a.k.a., creating the buck, and then passing it)

 

Available remedy? The av company could of course hire the staff to check/test the programs that they want to flag as harmful and offer some verification as to the harm being caused.

 

When the av company states that our software is or contains a virus, they are making a public statement of criminal conduct and or actions by the person who created the software (you and me).

 

We as developers do have a valid case and argument that it isn't likely any av compoany could effectively dispute... The only reason they can do this is because we have not come together and challenged them in court.

 

 

 

Thoughts?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Macster (UBotter Labs) 112]

LOL (literally)

So basically you want to sue every AV company cause they flag (u) bots !? First read their policies to stop wasting your time unless you really don't have anything else to do with it!

 

Yes it is discutabile how AV companies operate but from an (u)bot getting blocked to proving they manipulate results, which some companies most likely do it for crowd control and marketing purposes, is something way beyond this forum to discuss. 

 

Since anyone can encrypt and compile an application your only chance to avoid getting flagged is to digitally sign your bots and guarantee that you don't distribuite malware.

 

Signing your software does not guarantee your program is virus free off course, but it will help on the long run and your software will not be flagged / blocked all the time. Also you can submit your software to be reviewed by the AV company that gave you a false positive and they will most likely remove the flag pretty quickly, or you can write a nice blog post telling the world their crappy AV is blocking your genuine signed software and i'm pretty sure they will not like that reputation on the long run.

 

http://network.ubotstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic/19547-how-to-avoid-antivirus-and-windows-alerts/

 

Have fun!

[Frank 177]

Yea it is a tremendous pain in the rear end, to be honest with you. But I too have no idea how to get around it. It's pretty much a few bad apples who have made it bad for all of us. They make a program with a virus in it using ubot and now we all pay the price.

 

Frank