Antivirus False positive in my executable

It is surprisingly common that Delphi applications are reported as (potentially) harmful by AV applications. It happened to me a while ago, using Delphi 2009, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Computing/2010_March_20#Delphi.2FAVG_Issue.

At SO, we also have

• Virus in Delphi 7
• Accidentally created a virus?

and many more.

It might be the actual Induc Virus. But most likely, it is a false positive.

Andreas's answer is excellent; it just happens a lot to Delphi applications.

Signing code doesn't make any difference -- I've had NOD32 throw false positives on signed Delphi code.

If there were any techniques that would avoid false-positives, virus authors will use them to avoid detection.

I've found the best course of action is, unfortunately, reactive rather than proactive. All AV vendors have a facility to report false positives, and I've found them to be responsive to reports.