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Norton Anti-Virus Incorrectly Reporting Issues

If you use any of Norton Anti-Virus products you may find it reports issues when attempting to download or install any of the Cantabile installers. Specifically, Norton reports the installers as suffering from the virus WS.Reputation.1 - however this is not actually a virus.

These Norton products use a reputation system that counts the number of times that a software package has been downloaded and installed by other users. A product's reputation is then used as a risk indicator. While this system is fine for heavily downloaded software, for products with a smaller market this presents a real issue. What's worse is that everytime the software is updated, it's reputation needs to be re-earned.

A report of WS.Reputation.1 does not in anyway reflect the contents of the downloaded file - it is a report based solely on it's reputation.

NOTE: If Norton reports any virus other than "WS.Reputation.1", please contact us immediately.

I've tried several times to have this issue addressed with Symantec however as yet it has not been resolved in a satisfactory manner.

What To Do About It

If you encounter this issue you should report the issue to Symantec and express your dissatisfaction with their software reporting false positives.

To actually work around it you have a couple of options:

  1. The downloaded file is not deleted but stored in quarantine. You can restore the file from quarantine after which it will no longer be removed.
  2. You can turn this "feature" off. In the Norton UI it's called "Download Intelligence". You can simply turn it off - either permanently or for the time needed to download and install Cantabile.
  3. Switch from Norton to another anti-virus product.

More Information