My question is about the category of AVG alerts which contain the text "False alarm", such as the one that appears in this old forum thread: http://forums.avg.com/us-en/avg-forums?sec=thread&act=show&id=219213
If AVG knows something to be a false alarm (i.e not malware), why does it give an alert at all? Or if it doesn't know, why does it say "False alarm"?
As far as I can tell it's their way of flagging suspicious files/activity and letting the user decide what to do, although the terminology used does sound especially silly. Given their well–publicised problems in the past (detecting user32.dll as malware and rendering systems unbootable after deleting it, detecting ZoneAlarm as malware and so on), I recommend you switch to a better free or paid antivirus.
It means it is likely to be a false positive. However, it may not be! Yes, confusing I know.
The idea is if it is detected you then use other tools like https://www.virustotal.com/en/ to be sure or get a better understanding!
Source; http://forums.avg.com/gb-en/avg-forums?sec=thread&act=show&id=395
