Is Firefox lying to users about viruses in downloads?

IIRC, Chrome does the same thing too. I think it's not much of an issue for Firefox to flag stuffs downloaded from suspected URLs as a malware since it's not uncommon to have one's system infected from those sites' content. Firefox is just trying it's best to prohibit any sort of system infection through itself.

Re: Is Firefox lying to users about viruses in downloads?

#7

Post by klez » Wed, Jul 04, 2018, 3:09 PM UTC

Piskvorrr wrote: post #4

Spoiler: no, sometimes flags safe content from shady sources.

In my book, flagging as malware something that is not malware is lying, or at least a false positive.

So, spoiler: it's a bit more nuanced than "yes" or "no".

Re: Is Firefox lying to users about viruses in downloads?

#8

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Wed, Jul 04, 2018, 3:10 PM UTC

Piskvorrr wrote: post #4

Spoiler: no, sometimes flags safe content from shady sources.

... so, materially yes? As a user, I don't care that they have an excuse, I care that they said "this file is a virus" when the file was not a virus.

Re: Is Firefox lying to users about viruses in downloads?

#9

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Wed, Jul 04, 2018, 3:11 PM UTC

sus_007 wrote: post #6

Firefox isn’t necessarily scanning the files for viruses, they’re often just using databases that list domains suspected of hosting malware. IIRC, Chrome does the same thing too. I think it's not much of an issue for Firefox to flag stuffs downloaded from suspected URLs as a malware since it's not uncommon to have one's system infected from those sites' content. Firefox is just trying it's best to prohibit any sort o…

Then (as the article suggests) Firefox should actually tell the user that it is the site that is untrusted and not the file, and allow the user to save it so that they can actually scan it themselves.

Re: Is Firefox lying to users about viruses in downloads?

#10

Post by klez » Wed, Jul 04, 2018, 3:12 PM UTC

sus_007 wrote: post #6

Firefox isn’t necessarily scanning the files for viruses, they’re often just using databases that list domains suspected of hosting malware. IIRC, Chrome does the same thing too. I think it's not much of an issue for Firefox to flag stuffs downloaded from suspected URLs as a malware since it's not uncommon to have one's system infected from those sites' content. Firefox is just trying it's best to prohibit any sort o…

> Firefox is just trying it's best to prohibit any sort of system infection through itself.

In that case I would change the wording from "contains malware" to "may contain malware".

Also, they're prohibiting nothing. They still give you the option to open the file (which, as explained by the article, opens a whole different, albeit small, can of worms)