False Positives are...

• A. Messages that have not been sent by a malicious actor and are legitimate emails that have been incorrectly reported as malicious
• B. Messages that are malicious but not detected
• C. Legitimate emails that are automatically quarantined
• D. Messages that are spam emails

Answer: (A)

False positives happen when something that isn’t actually harmful is treated as if it were. In security filtering, that means legitimate messages are incorrectly flagged as malicious. This option describes exactly that scenario: messages that are not from a malicious actor—legitimate emails—are reported as malicious by the filter. That direct alignment with the idea of misclassifying safe items as dangerous makes it the best fit.

The other ideas refer to different issues. A malicious message that isn’t detected describes a false negative. An automatically quarantined legitimate email is also a misclassification, but the clearest and most common definition of a false positive is a legitimate item being labeled as malicious. Spam isn’t inherently malicious and isn’t the typical definition of a false positive.