Boletrice Software

AOL Tools has been removed from this website for a few reasons:

I stopped using AOL several years ago. As a result, I could no longer update the program to work with upcoming AOL versions. Many of the features did not work with AOL 9.0 and higher.
McAfee Antivirus and McAfee SiteAdvisor have incorrectly identified AOL Tools as a trojan horse. Unfortunately they have not yet fixed this false positive.

Did AOL Tools really contain malware?

No. AOL Tools did not contain any adware, spyware, trojan horses, or malware of any shape or form. The program was completely safe to use, but unfortunately a few antivirus programs incorrectly flagged AOL Tools as having a trojan horse. False positives are not uncommon in the antivirus industry. A Google search for McAfee false positive yields over 60,000 results (link).

AVG Antivirus and Avast! Antivirus both offer free antivirus scanners, and despite offering a free service, they have one of the best customer support systems I have experienced. Both of these antivirus scanners flagged AOL Tools as having a trojan horse. I e-mailed them asking them to fix this, and they resolved the issue in their definitions files within a week.

View e-mail from AVG explaining that AOL Tools was flagged as a false positive.

View e-mail from Avast! explaining that AOL Tools did not, in fact, contain a trojan horse.

After sending numerous e-mails to McAfee asking them to fix this bug in their antivirus scanner, they have yet to do so. This is unfortunate because it is hurting the reputation of thousands of websites that are affected by false positives. After trying to get McAfee to correct this issue for over a year, I have decided to give up and completely remove AOL Tools from this website. I only hope that McAfee improves their antivirus scanner and customer service in the future.

Thank you for your understanding. If you would like to discuss this further, feel free to contact me.

Andrew Langford

Home | Contact | Privacy