Hello,
We submitted a whitelisting application at 2020-09-25, and fixed the software according to the researcher’s feedback, but have not received any response regarding the status of our application yet. Avast does not respond to our emails, so I am asking you to forward the message to the whitelisting team to find the application and update its status.
Our product is AppWizard (https://appwizard.ru), it is a software catalog which is distributed as a portable shell (standalone executable) and a complete installation (shell/update system/support tools). AppWizard contains offers from well-known vendors like Yandex or Opera, and the offers follow industry standards and clean guidelines (one offer per page, explicit Accept/Decline buttons, etc).
Most of installer builds get FileRepMalware detection in several days. Although there is a probability that an individual build may be whitelisted through the false-positive form, in the meantime AV software prevents execution of the installer, and the detection lowers the program reputation on Virustotal, causing additional distrust from users.
At 2020-09-25 we opened the whitelisting request [ ref:_00Db0Z3Sf._5005p2HALTP:ref ]. According to the researcher’s feedback the following things were fixed:
- modified offer parameres not to create an additional shortcut;
- removed virtual machine checks;
- fixed uninstaller to delete the updater scheduled task;
- added a switch to options screen to control the scheduled task;
Later we even removed the updater from the distribution to decrease the chance of detection.
At 2020-11-25 we opened a false-positive request [ ref:_00Db0Z3Sf._5005p2JnTtO:ref ] for a newer installer build and fixed offer pages according to the feedback:
- every page contains Accept and Decline buttons;
- option checkboxes are accessible by default (older installers required one more click to edit them);
- added option for Opera to set as default browser.
At 2020-12-03 we opened another false-positive request for a newer installer build, and Avast specialist responded that the file will be still classified as PUP - potentially unwanted. It does not make a difference, as Avast blocks these files just as viruses.
I did read these articles:
- https://support.avast.com/en-ww/article/228/ - it seems the installer is compliant with your clean guidelines,
- https://support.avast.com/en-ww/article/229/ - unable to take actions described in the whitelisting FAQ.
An example installer is available at https://dl.appwizard.ru/dl/installer/master/AppWizardSetup_1613599181.exe.
Everything that could lead to adware-related detection has been fixed so far, but since the first whitelisting application it is impossible to re-apply from the same email or domain, and there are no way of communication via email. That is why I am asking for help on the forum.
Best regards,
Constantin.
