In tests of validity, labeling noncases or the absence of a characteristic incorrectly; that is, categorizing noncases as cases or identifying a characteristic when it is actually not present.

email messages and attachments that are mistaken as spam or inappropriate by an email security product or service.

Those who were tested positive but do not have the disease.

E-mail you want to receive that is categorized by the spam filter as junk mail. By combining all of the best-known spam detection methods, trimMail Inbox delivers well below 1% in false positives.

A term used in OCR to denote those characters which the conversion engine thought were wrong but were in fact correct. false positives tend to rise if the engine accuracy requirements are set too high (see also substitutions).

E-mail that is not spam but is labeled spam by a spam filter of the recipient. Note that e-mail marketers may have different opinions of what is "spam" than e-mail recipients.

Messages incorrectly identified as spam.