Fun Fact, Revisited: There Is Always One Security Vendor Who Thinks UpdateStar.com Is Suspicious

Longtime readers will remember our little exposé from back in June 2025, in which we lovingly mentioned Seclookup and URLQuery for tagging UpdateStar.com as "Malicious" and "Suspicious" respectively, for reasons that boiled down to "the website has downloads on it".

Good news first: both of them came to their senses. Seclookup and URLQuery have cleared us. No apology bouquet, no "sorry for the 2025 slander" gift basket, but a clean bill of health all the same. We'll take it. Welcome back to reality, you two.

Bad news: the universe abhors a vacuum, and apparently also abhors UpdateStar having a fully green VirusTotal page. Enter our new contestant, fresh off the bench, ready to embarrass itself in front of dozens of its peers:

Dr.Web: "Malicious"

Not "suspicious." Not "let's have a chat about this." Malicious. The nuclear option. The word you'd expect next to a ransomware dropper, not next to a software update aggregator run by people who, we promise, have never once tried to encrypt anyone's family photos.

You can watch the full lineup of verdicts on VirusTotal yourself: a wall of green checkmarks from engines that actually looked at the site, and one lone red flag from Dr.Web, standing alone like the last kid picked for dodgeball, except the kid is convinced everyone else is wrong and it's the one holding the truth.

We tried to sort this out like adults

We wanted to give Dr.Web the benefit of the doubt. Maybe this was a one-off, a quick misunderstanding we could clear up with a friendly email. So we went looking for a way to appeal the flag, the same way we did with Seclookup and URLQuery back in 2025.

We are still looking. No contact form aimed at disputing a domain verdict, no visible appeals process, no "here's why we flagged you" explainer. Just a red "Malicious" badge sitting on our domain, unexplained and unmoved, while every other engine on the page waves us through.

So no, we don't know why Dr.Web thinks a software update site is malicious. We don't know what it thinks it found. We just know it's the only one who found it, and it isn't in a hurry to tell us what "it" is.

We eventually tracked down a channel and sent our appeal anyway. Spoiler: we got a reply. See below.

Update July 20,2026: Dr.Web Wrote Back!

We're thrilled to report that Dr.Web replied. We got this, in full:

"Greetings, Your request has been reviewed. This is not a false positive incident. Doctor Web doesn't recommend users to visit the site you have specified. Find out more about the Dr.Web policy on warning users about sites on the Dr.Web non-recommended list. Find out why sites get onto the Dr.Web non-recommended list. If you are willing to accept the risks associated with visiting the site, add it to your device's whitelist. Thank you for the cooperation."

Let's savor this for a moment, because there's a lot going on in four sentences.

First, "this is not a false positive incident." Bold declaration. No evidence, no explanation, no "here's the file that tripped us up." Just a verdict, delivered the way a judge might if the judge were also the jury, the prosecutor, and had already left for lunch.

Second, we were pointed to a general policy page about why sites get flagged, as if we hadn't already read the entire internet trying to figure that out ourselves. It's the customer-support equivalent of asking someone what's wrong and having them hand you a dictionary.

Third, and our personal favorite: the solution offered wasn't "we'll fix it," it was "you, personally, can whitelist us on your own device." Translation: Dr.Web isn't confident enough in its own verdict to actually stand behind it as an obstacle, but it is confident enough to leave it up for everyone else. Somewhere between "malicious" and "actually, feel free to visit at your own risk" is a company that has decided that being wrong loudly is easier than being right quietly.

And they signed off with "thank you for the cooperation," which is a genuinely lovely way to end a message that cooperated with absolutely nothing.

So to recap: no evidence, no appeal, no timeline, and a workaround that puts the burden entirely on the 90-odd engines' worth of users who never needed one in the first place.

Here's a handy checklist for Dr.Web

• Look at what the other ~90 engines are saying before doubling down alone. You are not the last honest cop in a corrupt precinct. You're the one guy still writing parking tickets for cars that moved a decade ago.
• Consider actually visiting the site, or opening a download, before declaring it malicious. Revolutionary idea, we know.
• Put up a contact form. Any contact form. We are begging you.
• Try the word "why." As in, "here's why we flagged this." It's free, and it would save everyone a lot of guessing.
• A false positive doesn't become true just because nobody can find a way to dispute it.

Why this still matters

We said it in 2025 and it's somehow even more true in 2026:

• User confusion. People see "Malicious" and assume the worst, regardless of what the other 90-odd engines say.
• Reputation damage. One red flag next to a wall of green checkmarks still stands out.
• SEO and trust signals. Blacklist entries don't care that they're statistically the outlier.

We run the same tight ship we ran in 2025: official installers, vetted downloads, and considerably more patience than we're being given credit for.

The punchline

Two vendors figured it out. It took them about a year, but they got there. We have every confidence Dr.Web will eventually join them too — we're just not going to hold our breath, and neither should you.

To Seclookup and URLQuery: thanks for coming around.

To Dr.Web: the bear is cute. The verdict isn't.

Until then, stay up to date, and stay (correctly) unflagged.

Related reading: Fun Fact: There Is Always One Security Vendor Who Thinks UpdateStar.com Is Suspicious (June 2025)