File Database User File Reviews

When looking for information related to any file from our PC system, we check many sources - presently there are many web pages with information somehow related to the file names, file locations, products etc. Each user of the System Explorer application knows this situation - we knows more or less what application does the file belong to, but what it really does in the system, and is it safe or threat.

On our global file database, the final scoring is composed on those criteria :

• file reviews
• discovered date
• users occurrence
• antivirus scan results

File reviews are a possibility how each user can say his/her own information about the respective file to the other users - such information is based on the real user experience with the file. In most cases, such information has a more value than let's say antivirus scan.

For every file, we try to check the files against the free web antivirus service : Virus Total or Jotty. This action unfortunately can be provided only if we have such file directly on our computer. For the System Explorer application user, the situation is easy : from the application itself send the file (e.g. from Processes screen) to the Virus Total service and the information about the VT scan result (using more that 40 antivirus engines) will be saved in their database with unique file identifier (mostly MD5 or SHA hash) for public use. This is step ONE in the file evaluation process.

On the other hand, some file can be malicious to the computer (e.g. adwares or files taking too much of system resources - CPU, Memory, Internet connections etc.) - no antivirus will give such information, but the user can. So even file with zero negative validation from antiviruses can be marked as a threat by users - and they will be right.

On the other hand - it happens frequently - some antiviruses can mark some file as a potential threat (if the inner file coding seems to carry the marks of antivirus behavior). But from the real user experience, the file is behaving correctly and is no harm to the user's computer - to the extent the user can judge (sometimes this is the stumbling-block - we the common users are not professionals in computer science and sometimes our judgement should not be the best one - do not worry in that case we take the users occurrence of the file into consideration).

So these are the main criteria why the real user experience with the respective file is so important for us. And now how the judgement is done :

1. Reviews sorting : On the example above there is just one review. If there is more they can be sorted by selected criteria :

• Time : the submit time of each review
• Filename : more filenames can have same MD5 variant = diffrent filenames can be the same file 
• Occurence : each file was discovered by different number of users. Typically the higher occurence the more reliable source of information
• Votes : each review can be marked by + or - votes as a more or less reliable, and sorted by the + votes

2. There are two navigation Hyperlinks :

• Add Own Review : after pressing this hyperlink user is navigated down to the review adding area
• File ID link : as there can be more reviews on the global FIleName page, by using this hyperlink user will be navigated to the page for the selected individual file and the global information for this file only will be displayed. Use it e.g. when looking for file in specific directory or info for file from specific product/company.

3. File review itself. After the review is submitted by the user, it is being reviewed by our team. After the acceptance the file review is displayed among the other reviews.

4. Voting buttons : As said before, each file review can tell which experience user has with the file - by nature of such review it can be trusted or not. Any user can give + or - votes to the specific user file review and by doing so to increase or decrease the reliability of the review. The reviews with more positive votes will be preferred when displaying the list of all reviews.

5. Reviews of all variants : Accordingly to the "File ID link" when standing on page with information for just one specific file, using this hyperlink user can display the page with information for all files with this name.

6. Add file review : in this area the final decision is made by the user.

• File rating : user can select from 2 main file ratings : 
• Safe : from our deepest beliefs the file is no harm for the computer. It doesn't perform any harmful operation and it actions are more or less known or traceable.
• Threat : honestly we can say that the file is not safe - is performing some harmful operations, is overloading the PC resources, behaves non-deterministic, is infected by virus, is a fake...

For this decision we also state that we are sure with this voting. Please bear in Your mind that it can easily end with violating the good name of the file issuing company if the voting is not fair, on the other hand the other users should be warn that e.g. some application is a fake antivirus.

• Tags & Popular Tags : by giving a specific tag (or file label) we can specify more what we think about the respective file and this way to make our voting more precise. User can even select already existing Popular Tag or write own tag into the field "add a tag" (this is free field, please try to write only a simple labels - one or two worlds maximum).

• Comment : this is the most important part of user's review. Specially when marking some file as a threat and giving no reason for that, in most cases it will result in rejecting Your review by our team. When user is making the decision, it must be clear why the decision was made. Please write at least short comment for the file or the application the file belongs to. Bear on mind that the information will server the other users and the community. The comment can be written preferably in English language, but more languages are accepted - just select the appropriate language from the language bar (if You language is not there ... well, write to us and we will try to add it!)
• If the file just appeared in You SE application and You are not sure about its function, please just send empty review with no username / e-mail / rating / review comments. In such case our team will search for all information for the file and make the decision instead the user.
• When all the information is filled, then press the Submit button and the review is written to our cloud database for acceptance process. It will not appear directly on the page, so please be patient and do not write another review immediately. The acceptance process should not take more than one day. The information about having review waiting for the acceptance should appear on the page after refresh.