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Other => General Topics => Topic started by: MWassef on January 24, 2010, 02:11:12 PM

Title: scanning PUPs
Post by: MWassef on January 24, 2010, 02:11:12 PM
what does this mean? and what is PUPs anyway ?  :-[ ???
Title: Re: scanning PUPs
Post by: cod head on January 24, 2010, 02:20:28 PM
Potentially Unwanted Programme.It is advising you to turn on to scan for PUP's. ;)
Title: Re: scanning PUPs
Post by: Hermite15 on January 24, 2010, 03:15:12 PM
yeah, some programs ("unwanted") can install silently on your system, that's what it's for.
Title: Re: scanning PUPs
Post by: MWassef on January 24, 2010, 04:29:43 PM
thnx guys  :)
Title: Re: scanning PUPs
Post by: MikeBCda on January 24, 2010, 09:14:38 PM
PUPs usually aren't "hard-core" malware, just nuisances (typically adware), so most malware scanners won't bother with them.  But of course if you can scan for and remove them, so much the better.
Title: Re: scanning PUPs
Post by: Wiiwa on January 24, 2010, 10:47:11 PM
I didn't know this.
I activated it now, thanks for the tip. :)
Title: Re: scanning PUPs
Post by: evank93 on October 29, 2010, 07:43:58 AM
what will happent when the Avast flag potentially dangerous programs as PUP
do it will definitely generate a lot of false positives???

what you mean by....... some programs ("unwanted") can install silently on your system, that's what it's for.????

do the PUP will block the unwanted program or pervent it for installing...????

what will happen when i turn on the PUP????
is it good or bad i turn on it.....????
do it bring any damage to my system.....???
Title: Re: scanning PUPs
Post by: igor on October 30, 2010, 01:17:56 AM
I wouldn't say that PUPs are nuisances... or "easy malware" (so that AVs "don't bother"); it's something different.

PUPs are tools that some people may install on purpose on their system (and therefore don't want to detect them), but on the other hand - if such a file appears on your system without your knowledge, it's quite likely that this tool is being abused by some malware (or even a human attacker) - and something bad is going on.
For example: keyloggers, remote control tools, network sniffers, FTP servers, ...

So, it's not really that AVs don't care about detecting the tools - the question is whether the user actually wants these tools to be detected, because they are not bad per se, only if abused. (So, I believe the detection is disabled in avast! by default).