Personally, I do not use Yahoo Mail, so I can not speak on an individual perspective. But, it appears that there have been many cases where Symantec considers Yahoo Mail a virus threat, even though it really isn’t. This false alarm will probably concern many Yahoo Mail users, so hopefully Symantec will be more public about this glitch.

Yahoo’s e-mail service is not infected with a computer virus, despite a warning from Symantec that says it is.

Starting sometime on Tuesday, accessing the beta version of Yahoo Mail on a PC with Symantec’s updated antivirus software caused alarm bells to go off. The security software reported finding the “Feebs” worm on the Yahoo Web pages.

That warning was in error, Symantec said Wednesday.

“Symantec antivirus products…triggered a false-positive alert with Yahoo Mail beta,” Vincent Weafer, a senior director at Symantec Security Response, said in an e-mailed statement.

Symantec started receiving reports of the incorrect warnings Tuesday evening, after it had sent out the latest antivirus definitions for its products. Symantec issued updated definitions later in the evening to fix the mistake, Weafer said.[more]

Tags: Computer Protection, Bugs