Are virus hoaxes a genuine computer virus

Are virus hoaxes a genuine computer virus

A hoax is a fraud or lie.  Virus hoaxes are lies. They are not real viruses but a scare for the general population.  Hoaxes are circulated so you watch for the fake virus and let the real virus through.  The only good thing is your security will not let the real virus through as they are always being updated with the latest virus names and properties so they can tell and stop the threat.  Hoaxes are mainly email scams to make a lot of people worried and paranoid.  They are not to be feared, they are a hoax and are trying to trick you into believing they are real.

Are virus hoaxes a genuine computer virus

There are no virus hoaxes. A virus is a virus. I don’t think a program can pretend to be a virus and also I don’t think a programmer will do it to his program because an antivirus will surely remove it from any computer system.

When an antivirus identifies a program to be harmful or unwanted or suspects it is a virus, the antivirus will immediately place it into quarantine. When a program is under quarantine, it is not immediately deleted from the machine. The antivirus moves the suspected program from its original location into the quarantine folder of the antivirus. The program is also renamed into something else and monitored.

But sometimes an antivirus program can misidentify a safe program into being malicious. This is what they call “false positive”. This means a safe and healthy program is identified as malicious or harmful by some antivirus programs and there are others which identify it as safe.

If you know a program is safe and harmless but your antivirus detects it as malicious or harmful or an unwanted program, go to the settings of your antivirus application and add that program into the exclusion list. When a program, file, or folder is added into the exclusion list, the antivirus will ignore it in its scan.