No Virus or Malware In M1, Ever

This week, Richie Gardiner a long time M1/Traffecta user in Dublin reported his AVG anti-virus app was giving him a warning, saying the m1 upgrade file was infected with something.  This is not so. He sent me a link to the AVG site where I learned the company had recently updated it’s software.  I began reading some posts from its users and saw that it is currently returning false-positives on a great many sites.

Should you ever get such a message, please know there is no way the M1 upgrade or installer files have viruses.  Programmer Neil Campbell is more paranoid about viruses and hackers than the CIA. All M1 work is developed and compiled on a computer that is fully isolated, no internet connection at all, ever. The newly compiled file is then moved by flash to Neil’s other computer and immediately uploaded from the flash to our ftp site. The only way a virus could get into it would be if the bad guy monitored when a new one was updated, then downloaded it himself, installed a virus and then re-uploaded it.

Each time Neil posts a new one from the California office, within 24 hours, I download it here in Texas, run and unzip the file. If there was one, I’d be one of the first to get it. We’d know it and pull it.  Such a thing has never happened, of course.

The most common problem with M1 upgrade downloads is with anti-virus apps that block any and all downloads of .exe files.  Those are ‘application’ files; they will “do something” on the computer, as opposed to documents that one merely opens and reads.  But now we know viruses can also be hidden in something as simple and common as a Word document; so there’s that. Be careful out there.

FYI: I think some anti-virus apps are designed to give a lot of warnings, the better to justify continuing to pay their subscription fees. Microsoft’s security suite is excellent and mostly trouble-free and it costs nothing. I’ve used it for about 10 years now and had not one virus or malware problem.