Small update (v1.3) and Malware Detection update

Good evening everyone!

For the past couple days, I have been looking into a big hurdle: once unzipped, the app (more specifically the .exe file) can be flagged as a malware (a Trojan malware to be more precise). I sent the most recent build to a few of my friends and they all get the same issue where Windows Defender flags it as a potential Severe virus. Of course, as a user and buyer, this is a massive issue.

This is called a "false-positive" and has been an issue raised on forums by quite a few people. This seems to be coming from a few places, for example: when the code itself uses libraries that can act on system functions (which I believe is where mine is stemming from), or even the packager itself. At first, I used to build my code with 'pyinstaller' to create my initial builds. I found out that, effectively, I had that malware flag raised by builds coming from that packager (i.e., 'pyinstaller'), and read that others had similar issues with it. I then decided to switch to 'nuitka', which is another popular packager, which internally compiles and builds using C. Sadly, this didn't change much and am still getting this app flagged as malware.

So, of course, this is going to be a stopper for lots of people. I am going to do my very best to try and get this all sorted out but, long term will either be: buying a Code Certificate (which is quite expensive --cheapest I found was ~150 USD) or removing any problematic code, which will require me to investigate deeply my code to check which package and/or implementation is the culprit.

For the time being, I will do two things: give you as much info on this issue, and I submitted a ticket to Microsoft Security Intelligence team to analyze and hopefully resolve this issue for this current build. I'll definitely do an update when they reach back (either for a good or bad news). I sent the same build that is currently up on the itch.io page, the only change being that the .zip archive needs to have a password set as 'infected'.

Also, here is a link to the test I did to see how broad this malware issue is: link to virusTotal.com, and here is a screenshot of that same page:

So overall (and at this very moment), I am mostly waiting on Microsoft's response to continue forward.

Of course, if you decide to still buy and continue forward, first: Thank you! I hope you enjoy the app!!, and second, you can add an exclusion for this app in Windows Defender itself.

Before ending, here is a (very) short list of changes that this new build brings:

• While in either "Edit Bill" or "Add Extra Payment", removing the selection (by clicking on an empty spot in the table) will close the form. This doesn't affect "Add Bill" and "Settings".
• Added simple a readme.md (similar to readme.txt, but more commonly used by versioning software like Git).
• Fixed an error that would freeze the app upon acknowledging a toast notification.

In hope everyone has a good rest of day.

Cheers!