I like Avast for its ease of use. However as a software developer I find that my programs (and indeed many of the components in programs that I am using) are flagged as viruses. I have excluded the directory where I save my own projects and I have excluded one of the packages that I use. However this I feel is a risk.
Is there any way of mitigating the so very many false positives I am receiving? In my virus chest I have about 20 false positive files all purporting to be the “Win32:Evo-gen [Susp]” virus.
Well you can try excluding specific file types (related to the stuff you are developing) in that particular folder, edit the exclusion and add the file type at the end /*.v21 (example of excluding my drive image disk image files). Though if these are all .exe files there would still be a limited risk.
You can set the First action to Ask, which would allow you to select an option, but there isn’t one directly to allow and exclude (to prevent accidental use on a true virus).
You could try sending a couple of these files from the virus chest to avast for analysis, it may help.
When in the chest with these files you can also Restore and add to exclusions.