Six Easy Ways to Tell if a Virus Really is a Virus

Six Easy Ways to Tell if a Virus Really is a Virus

We've all been there - you get an alert from your virus scanner warning that a particular file is infected. Sometimes the alert reappears even after you've told the antivirus scanner to remove the infection. Or maybe you just have reason to believe the virus alert may be a false positive. Here are six things you'll want to consider to determine how to handle a suspicious or questionable virus alert.

1. Location, Location, Location
As with real estate, the location of what's being detected can have critical bearing. If you're getting repeated alerts of the same infection, it may be due to non-active malware that's trapped in the system restore folders or a remanant in some other location that is triggering the alert.