Adware in Equalizer APO?
A system-wide equalizer for Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10 / 11
Brought to you by:
jthedering
Menu
▾
▴
Jonas,
First, thanks for a great app.
I ran two versions of Equalizer APO through VirusTotal which says it "analyzes suspicious files and URLs". The versions I tested were EqualizerAPO64-0.9.2.exe and EqualizerAPO64-1.0.exe. Ver. 0.9.2 tested clean, however Ver 1.0 showed "Adware.MultiPlug.Win32.499530".
Now the results for Ver. 1.0 might simply be a false positive, however, you are probably aware of the discussion about SourceForge.net and adware.
I would be interested to hear your comments on this topic. Would it be possible for you to post the exact file size for the version of 1.0 you uploaded? If additional adware had been inserted in your code, it's possible that size of the file which we downloaded might be different.
Don
I doubt that this software contains adware because:
a) the author of Equalizer APO appears to be very much in control of his source code on this website.
b) Virustotal only detects 2 / 55 with v1.0, both of which are dubious generic heuristic hits, which are overwhelmingly likely to be false positives.
c) I've been using Equalizer APO v1.0 and v1.1.1, and I haven't seen any ads.
d) I've run both Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Trend Micro HouseCall Antivirus since installing Equalizer APO, both of which didn't detect any adware on my entire system drive.
e) the onus is on YOU to only use offical links to the download, try to avoid mirrors and watch the installer carefully to opt out of any adware if you accidentally download from a mirror that may have injected adware into the installer (shouldn't be the case with Equalizer APO).
Last edit: Jason Brown 2015-12-15
I just uploaded version 1.1.1, both 64 and 32 bit version, directly from my hard disk (not downloaded) to VirusTotal. One of the antivirus applications showed "BehavesLike.Win32.Tool.wc", whatever that means. Version 1.0 additionally showed "Adware.MultiPlug.Win32.499530" from another antivirus application. So the files are not changed by any mirror, instead the antivirus applications' heuristics often have problems with little known software.
I also recently had a problem with Avast Antivirus, which did not want to let me use the uninstaller of E-APO for some reason. Unfortunately, this seems to be how today's AV software is working and might drive away some users. I don't see how to change this.
The only thing I can say for sure is that E-APO does not contain any ads. It's open source software, so it would be relatively easy for anyone to remove unwanted source parts and recompile.
Thanks for the responses to my post.
What do you think about comparing the file size you upload with the size the user downloads? If code had been added or altered would that show up in such a comparison? The size of EqualizerAPO64-1.0 which I downloaded is 7,734,661 bytes. Presumably that's what you uploaded.
If you click the little "i" button (universal symbol for information) next to the download, you should see SHA1 and MD5 checksums which, as long as they are consistent with the original installer file, are more than adequate for verifying the authenticity of the download.