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Beeftext is safe

Xavier Michelon edited this page Jul 5, 2021 · 6 revisions

Antivirus

Occasionally, Beeftext gets flagged by antivirus/security solutions as malicious software. For instance, on the day of the release of Beeftext 9.0, a scan of the installer on virustotal.com showed that 4 out of 64 tested AV engines flagged the file as malicious.

virustotal.com report

Do not worry, Beeftext is safe. The problem is linked to the way Beeftext operates. In order to properly detect keywords and trigger combo substitution, Beeftext listens to the keystrokes typed by the user. Unfortunately, this is exactly the same behavior as the one implemented in malicious keyloggers that record your keystrokes in order to intercept your usernames and passwords. As a consequence, security software (Antiviruses, Malware protection and web security software) that perform an advanced analysis of the behavior of applications (known as heuristic analysis) may mistakenly consider Beeftext as harmful.

Beeftext does not store nor share what you type. As soon as we are sure you're not typing a keyword, Beeftext wipe your last typed characters from memory. Furthermore, Beeftext is open-source, so the entire source code is accessible to anybody willing to verify its safety.

SmartScreen

If you have Windows Defender SmartScreen enabled in your Windows Security settings (it is on by default), you will most likely get a warning screen from Windows when you try to launch the Beeftext installer.

SmartScreen warning message

This screen basically tells you that Beeftext might be dangerous, and that you should probably avoid installing it. Again, it is safe to install Beeftext. You are getting this message because, in order to be accepted by the SmartScreen mechanism, Microsoft requires that your installer and application are digitally signed using an EV code signing certificate, which costs roughly $500 per year. This is not an option, as Beeftext development budget is zero, and the developer disagrees with the policy applied by Microsoft for SmartScreen validation.

You can bypass the SmartScreen window by following the More info link and clicking on the Run anyway button.

SmartScreen warning message