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While Gmail’s popularity may be positively viral, the email software remains emphatically antivirus. But Microsoft’s new Windows Live OneCare recently started incorrectly flagging Gmail as a threat.

According to an article at ZDNet, when OneCare users tried to access their Gmail accounts last week, a warning popped up telling them that their systems were infected with a virus called "BAT/BWG.A".

Obviously this was a clear case of, and clear example of, a false positive. While this one was fairly harmless, as once Microsoft was informed of the problem, they released a new antivirus signature that quickly resolved the issue, false positives have been known to cause much more havoc.

In terms of my own experience with false positives, a certain V.I.P. email incorrectly identified as spam once nearly cost me a job. You can bet I checked my junk mail folders much more judiciously after that.

Apparently, Microsoft’s OneCare problem with Google began when Google made some changes to its Gmail website. Google is currently reviewing its processes and procedures to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

And I guess in terms of Microsoft versus Google, if you can’t beat ‘em, flag ‘em.

Posted by pschooff in Google • Spam |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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