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makkupai
Contributor
Message 1 of 9

Open office marked as a virus!

It takes tremendous audacity to make a claim of great anti virus packed and still shout that      open office  IS A POTENTIALLY UNWANTED PROGRAMME WHICH MAY CARRY MALICIOUS SOFTWARE.

McAfee has got itself force purchased by consumers selling it along with the system. Take it or leave it. you have no choice. And it neatly blocked WIDOWS DEFENDER grabbing its place and gives me a false warning about open office. I am absolutely annoyed and shocked.
How many other warnings are false and how many reals malicious  programms are granted entry only God can tell.
These anti virus people, do they really know what they are doing or are  they merely cashing on our fears?
Does one really need an antivirus over and above WINDOWS 10 defender which is rendered idle by MCAFEE?

8 Replies
SafeBoot
MVP
MVP
Message 2 of 9

Re: Open office marked as a virus!

You don't mention which McAfee product you're using, or give us enough details of the open office installation you got the message with.

It's quite possible you were the victim of ad-ware, but without more detail no one can possibly know.

Re the "force purchased" claim - I am not understanding you - are you saying you were forced to buy a subscription to McAfee when you purchased your computer? That seems to be very poor behaviour - let us know more and I'm sure someone will investigate. Every OEM I've seen gave purchasers of their computers at least a few free months of use before asking if they wanted to subscribe. I've never seen a situation where buying a subscription was mandatory.

As for whether you "really need" McAfee over Windows 10 - that's a decision for you. Windows 10 is just anti-virus. McAfee provides a whole suite of security protection technology - spam, malware, web site reputation, parental controls, password management, file protection and more.

Only you can decide whether the experiences of McAfee are worth the subscription - Your PC manufacturer would seem to think they were compelling enough to offer them to you though?

Hayton
Reliable Contributor
Reliable Contributor
Message 3 of 9

Re: Open office marked as a virus!

If this is Open Office and not LibreOffice then it could be this :

I have Open Office installed, and this week I received an email from Sourceforge informing me that an update was available, downloadable from their site (link provided).

I fired up Open Office and used the program's own update checker, which found no updates, so I left it at that.

It's possible that Sourceforge is bundling other programs in with the download, which WebAdvisor is detecting.

makkupai
Contributor
Message 4 of 9

Re: Open office marked as a virus!

Going by the adage that NO SUCH THING AS FREE LUNCH. one can only assume that McAfee pre-loaded (15 month license) in the system-- just like Windows 10 , comes with its price also pre-loaded.

If it was a one-month license I would have assumed it was a trial offer.(Vendor of my previous PC gave 2 month  antivirus license )

There was no option to bargain for the price of McAfee if you do not want it.  'FORCE_PURCHASED' may not be correct in the legalistic angle. But my vendor gave me option to purchase extended warranty on additional payment. There was no such option for Mcaffee  nor a choice for another brand of anti virus.
I think I am now understood.

But  my main issue is why and how  OPENOFFICE was warned against as an unwanted  potentially dangerous application. This throws up an issue of credibility of McAffee

makkupai
Contributor
Message 5 of 9

Re: Open office marked as a virus!

I down loaded from OPENOFFICE site and not sourceforge

Hayton
Reliable Contributor
Reliable Contributor
Message 6 of 9

Re: Open office marked as a virus!

I went to the Open Office site and looked for the latest version : 4.1.3

I had 4.1.2, so I re-opened the program and checked again for an update. This time the program said an update was available so I clicked the little icon at top right on the intro screen. This opened the Open Office site, with a Download button which, when clicked, took me to Sourceforge.net -

https://sourceforge.net/projects/openofficeorg.mirror/?source=typ_redirect

Sourceforge has, in the past, been tempted to raise revenue by adding third-party programs to downloads. I do not believe they do this now : there was an outcry from users and the practice was stopped. Certainly my download did not appear to include anything other than Open Office.

During the download I received no warnings from Chrome nor from WebAdvisor. As a double-check, I passed the URLs of Open Office and their download site to TrustedSource, from where WebAdvisor picks up its ratings. Both came back as "Minimal Risk", so therefore Green in WebAdvisor.

The download is of course only an installer. I scanned that file with McAfee and Malwarebytes immediately after downloading it : both scans passed OK.

One thing I noticed and that bothers me is that the downloaded installer does not have a valid digital signature to verify the publisher. To install Open Office you have to click past the warning and trust - hope - that the file is authentic.

Security warning.PNG

OO wizard.PNG

So far so good, although I had a tussle with (re-)installing Visual C++ along the way.

Now it wants me to close Chrome. I'll return later with an update.

Hayton
Reliable Contributor
Reliable Contributor
Message 7 of 9

Re: Open office marked as a virus!

Installation successful. No warnings from McAfee so far.

OO 4.1.3 installed.PNG

OO kicks off ok.PNG

Normal startup. No problem.

Open Office executable file soffice.exe scanned with McAfee : nothing found.

So, let's get down to the nitty-gritty. I've downloaded and installed Open Office, showing you clearly where I got the file from and illustrating the installation process with screenshots and, as you can see, McAfee has nothing to say about either the installer or the installed executable.

You are alleging that McAfee is flagging Open Office  <quote>  As A Virus  <unquote>.

I would like to see some evidence to back up your assertion, preferably in the form of screenshots showing any warnings or error messages that McAfee is displaying on your system. I would also like to know if this occurs before download, during download, during installation or when Open Office is opened.

It may be that you are confusing viruses (serious malware) with PUPs and PUAs (usually less harmful although frequently regarded as junk programs). There is no way that I can see that McAfee would class Open Office as a Potentially Unwanted Program/Application. What has happened in the past is that with a download such as this you might also get unwanted programs bundled in with the installer. As I said, Sourceforge say they don't do that now. So I'm at a loss to know where any PUP/PUA could have come from.

If you can provide the screenshots, we might have a better idea what has happened.

makkupai
Contributor
Message 8 of 9

Re: Open office marked as a virus!

I see your point.
But now that I have already installed OPEN OFFICE and let MCAFEE skip regarding it as a threat or potential threat I will not be able to provide the screen shot you mentioned.

Peacekeeper
Message 9 of 9

Re: Open office marked as a virus!

Ah I notice you mentioned skip the detection is this on the consumer version or corporate ie VSE? I ask as in consumer there is only 1 way you can trust a detection and that if it is a PUP. The actual detection will be shown in your quarantined and trusted list/ trusted items maybe look there and post the details there?

Note this option is not available in the latest 15.1 version of the software.

post the details of the file you see there that is if you use the consumer version. If corporate they might have a similar area to get the deatails

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