On its home page, CNET’s Download.com promises that all software available on the site “has been tested to ensure it’s 100% free of spyware, viruses, and other malware.” Unfortunately, there appears to be a kink in the system that allows the display of a known adware program called AntiVirus Defender.
According to malware researchers at Kaspersky Lab, the adware program is appearing as a recommendation in Download.com’s Anti Virus Software tab.
I hope they have it fixed as soon as possible, but either way there was a download about a year ago on Download.com for a trial of Roller coaster Tycoon (don’t remember which version) and avast flagged it as a Trojan I don’t think I uploaded it to Virustotal because I didn’t know about Virustotal back then.
Reporting one single (do you have confirmed others) failure of another site in this area is reasonable and truthful - I hope it does not tend toward gloating.
While I know avast makes no claims to 100% etc it can hardly be claimed that our own avast product does not have the odd issue from time to time (to say the least).
I agree. Download.com tends to be very careful of their offered downloads. I wish I could say the same for the advertisemnt policy on CNET forums. I’ve reported several “rogues” which were ignored or classified as “safe”.