I think this is a necessity to justify AV to the masses. They have to find lots of "threats" to a) keep your average user scared into renewing every year and b) impress the owner that the application is so thorough. Look at this! it found all these cookies that could harm me! This software rocks!
Re:Men who spy on women through their webcams
by tripzilch on Wednesday March 13, 2013 @02:52PM
(#5370328)
> "Tracking cookie detected! Your life is in danger!"
That's the difference between Microsoft Security Essentials and commercial AV software. One is designed to just make the more OS secure, the other also needs to advertise its presence and appear to be "doing something".
I tend to notice a correlation between people who have problems with malware/spyware/crapware and people who have AV software installed and it's the opposite of what you might expect. Perhaps people who install it get a false sense of security?
AV software tends to be either ineffective in that it doesn't detect a lot of actual malware or it is constantly generating a lot of false positives which people just learn to ignore "Tracking cookie detected! Your life is in danger!".