Patent ID: 8627469

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for using acquisitional contexts to prevent false-positive malware classifications, at least a portion of the method being performed by a server-side computing device comprising at least one processor, the method comprising: receiving, from at least one client-side computing device within a community of users, contextual information associated with a file, wherein the contextual information: identifies a context in which the client-side computing device acquired the file; indicates that the client-side computing device exonerated the file due to the context in which the client-side computing device acquired the file after receiving, from the server-side computing device, reputation information for the file that indicated that the file should not be trusted due to the file's low prevalence within the community; using, based at least in part on the file having been exonerated at the client-side computing device due to the context in which the client-side computing device acquired the file after receiving reputation information for the file that indicated that the file should not be trusted due to the file's low prevalence within the community, the context in which the client-side computing device acquired the file to determine a reputation rating for the file; providing the reputation rating for the file to at least one additional client-side computing device within the community in order to prevent the additional client-side computing device from falsely classifying the file as untrustworthy due to acquiring an additional instance of the file via a context that is insufficient to determine that the additional instance of the file is trustworthy.