Muhammad Muquit
Thanks for dropping by !
McAfee SiteAdvisor's slander!
Some people reported that some version of McAfee virus scanner detects
one of my software mailsend as Gaobot virus. The root of the
probelm is McAfee SiteAdvisor. It falsely claiming that mailsend is a virus! They are
basically ruining the reputation of my site, which solely exists (more than 12 years) to serve the Internet community with free software I
wrote. As yahoo uses McAfee SiteAdvisor software, my site shows up as all red flagged in search. It's a shame yahoo has become so
clueless!
Apparently it is nothing new, McAfee SiteAdvisor is notorious for flagging sites falsely.
Google on it, you will see what I mean.
I scanned with Trend Micro PC-cillin v 15.30.1151, and McAfee's very own Viruscan Enterprise 8.0, Other people have reported they scanned with Norton Antivirus, ClamAV 0.94.1/8645, avast! v4.8 Home Edition and found mailsend is clean.
The site: http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/muquit.com/downloads/6455549/ claims that mailsend modifies registry:
CHANGE [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Prefetcher] CHANGE TracesProcessed=dword:00000010 CHANGE TracesSuccessful=dword:0000000c
This is just insane!
mailsend does not have any code to mess with registry.
Here is my opinion on this:
Whoever reported that mailsend is a virus, was infected with Gaobot and
mailsend was corrupted. I know the program is not corrupted and it has no code to mess with registry, so I think this
explanation makes sense. It is also quite possible McAfee's software is just outright buggy.
If you have a better explanation, please let me know.
If you are interested to verify, I am leaving the original file: mailsend1.15b5.exe.zip (available at the
mailsend page).
MD5 sum: deb005aee615bbcae84fd9d87b8d6e8d
Check the bottom of the
SiteAdvisor page and check the size nd MD5
sum to make sure you are dealing with the same
file.
Please verify with your Virus scanner and send me your comment, I would appreciate it!.
It's a shame McAfee accepts this kind of claim without verifying themselves! If you use my software and if you are a user of MacAfee Virus Scanner, let MacAfee know about this problem and spread the word about the abuse and slander by MacAfee SiteAdvisor! I do not gain financially from my site but this kind of irresponsible behavior from MacAfee will certainly harm many online businesses.
If you want to comment, please visit my Blog. Thanks.-- muquit@muquit.com Nov-18-2008
Update:
I noticed McAfee SiteAdvisor now shows mailsend1.15b as 'virus free'. Why? The checksum is still the same, why suddenly it is 'virus free'? But I did not get any apology or explanation.Why did they mark my clean software as virus?
Why did my my site show up as red on yahoo (because yahoo uses SiteAdvisor database)?
Why did I have to deal with so many mails from people complaining that their McAffee software flags my site as dangerous?
I got lot of nice mails from you who understood it all along, thanks!
PS: I will keep this rant alive just to show how irresponsible and "we don't give a damn" company McAfee is!
-- muquit@muquit.com Aug-16-2009
