AVG v8 heuristic mode

From: "Caesar Romano"

| Does using the "heuristic" scan mode in AVG 8 do any good? Is that
| useful or just a gimmick?


Heuristics is something that all anti virus applications/scanners perform to one degree or
another.
Some you just enable/disable. Others you can enable with at various levels.

Basically all AV scanners use signature based detection. Heuristics takes it a step
further based upon known characteristic in the case of there not be a signature for a new
infector. Here the application/scanner takes the, "if it walks like a duck and squawks
like a duck then it must be a duck" approach. This greatly enhances detection. However
the negative side is an increase in False Positive declarations. This is where a
quarantine action comes into play. If a heuristic detection causes a file to be falsely
identified, the file will go into quarantine. Later when the file's declaration was
deemed to be a False Positive, the file can be restored.

In short, heuristics is NOT a gimmick and is quite useful.

--
Dave
http://www.claymania.com/removal-trojan-adware.html
Multi-AV - http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp