I am the developer of DaisyDisk. I have to chime in in order to prevent the disinformation. Contrary to what you are telling your users, DaisyDisk is NOT infected and it's NOT a "potentially unwanted program", and it doesn't "pose" any risk at all. It's a pure false positive.
DaisyDisk is a very popular, well reputed and useful tool for all Mac users. It's been around for 12 years, appraised in ~600 publications, including all major tech media, it's won the "Best of the Mac App Store" award from Apple editors three times. It's been widely recommended by IT specialists including Apple Geniuses. You can confirm this all easily by a simple google search.
Why don't you fully disclose the real reason why AVG is labeling DaisyDisk as a "PUP"? I will do it for you: AVG relies a third-party self-proclaimed company called Appesteem as their trusted source of information about PUPs. Unfortunately Appesteem has included DaisyDisk in their list of "Deceptor" apps. After I found out, I have been in contact with Appesteem and basically they told me that the alleged "deception" is that when DaisyDisk is used in the free trial mode, some of its functions are locked. They basically want me to make DaisyDisk entirely free, or remove the free trial mode, in order to comply with their self-asserted requirements.
As ridiculous as it sounds, they have so far refused my request to remove DaisyDisk from the "Deceptor" list, despite my detailed explanations, and proceeded to feed their list of PUPs to AVG, who is now uncritically applying it.
I tried to contact the AVG team as well, but they also simply bounce my emails back.
AVG, you are doing a disservice to your users by putting the "PUP" label on apps that everyone knows are perfectly legit. You are creating unnecessary worries for your users and undermining your own reputation as a reliable antivirus. You will get more emails and posts like this. Please stop misinforming people!
Hello Oleg,
We understand completely how you feel regarding this and we sincerely apologize to you for the inconvenience this may have caused.
AVG carefully monitors the quality of our products and the service we provide, therefore all feedback from our customers is important to us.
We want to let you know that we have checked with our specialists and they confirmed that we do take report from AppEsteem for analysis.
In regard to this, we would highly recommend that you to contact Appesteem support team and speak with them about the deletion option which you are referred. Please kindly contact them as we can't change the detection based on this as we get the information from them.
Hope you understand this situation. Thank you.
Hello A Z.
Thank you for reaching us here and sharing a screenshot of the detection pop up.
I see that DaisyDisk has been classified as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program) by AVG.
Potentially unwanted program or applications, classified as grayware, refer to applications installed in a mobile device or a computer that may pose high risk or have untoward impact on user security and/or privacy. It may also contribute in consuming computing resources. It may be unwanted by the user even if it is installed with users' consent. Most often than not, PUAs do not explicitly and completely state their functions and purpose. The impact the application causes may either inadvertently or simply be a part of its design. PUAs are created by legitimate or illegitimate software publishers.
If you believe DaisyDisk is harmless and AVG has falsely detected it as a threat, I would request you to submit the file in question to our developers for analysis.
- Open AVG AntiVirus and select the Computer tile.
- On the Quarantine tile, click Open.
- Hover your cursor over the relevant file in Quarantine, then click … More options (three dots) ▸ Send for analysis.
- In the form that appears, select either Potential malware or False positive and provide any details related to your issue, then click Send.
- The file is sent for analysis and remains in Quarantine.
Thanks for following up. As I said previously, I have already submitted the file to the AVG's false-positive analysis using the link you provided. I have done that several times now. However it doesn't help at all.
All I get in return is a rejection email referencing the Appesteem:
"ACR-004:The app requires the consumer to pay if they want to use the app to delete the files shown in the free scan results."
It's ridiculous to apply this requirement to DaisyDisk and then proceed to block the app and call it virus infected and a PUP because of this. Seriously? This is how many apps work in the free trial mode - some features are locked until you purchase a license. By no means it's NOT anything malicious!
DaisyDisk doesn't scare the user, it doesn't create any sense of urgency or false threat in order to make the user pay to solve an imaginary problem. DaisyDisk shows the user the actual content of his disk, the biggest files, which is already a valuable information in itself, and it's up to the user to decide to delete some files or not. He can even delete the files in Finder if he doesn't want to get the license at the moment.
It should be clear to any impartial person that there is absolutely nothing to trigger an antivirus alert!
Antiviruses are not in the position to decide how legit apps should work. Please mind your own business, fight the malware and stop blocking useful apps and misinforming users. This is what people will appreciate AVG for, not the other way around.
Hello Oleg,
We understand completely how you feel regarding this and we sincerely apologize to you for the inconvenience this may have caused.
AVG carefully monitors the quality of our products and the service we provide, therefore all feedback from our customers is important to us.
We want to let you know that we have checked with our specialists and they confirmed that we do take report from AppEsteem for analysis.
In regard to this, we would highly recommend that you to contact Appesteem support team and speak with them about the deletion option which you are referred. Please kindly contact them as we can't change the detection based on this as we get the information from them.
Hope you understand this situation. Thank you.
Hi Oleg,
Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience caused.
We request you to submit the detected file for false-positive analysis using this link.
Once you've submitted the false-positive report, our concerned team will analyze the file & if found harmless, they'll whitelist it right away.
Furthermore, they'll update the status via email.
Thank you for understanding in advance!