See All FAQs and Terms (Quick Links) for links to all FAQs including purchase terms, free software agreements, and software licensing terms.

A note about Anti-Virus detections

Sometimes our software can be falsely flagged as a ‘threat’ by some Anti-Virus, Anti-Malware, etc. security software vendors.

Read more about Anti-Virus Detections (False Positives) on this page, which includes external links to submit “false positive” detections to most security software vendors.

If you happen to be looking at results from VirusTotal.com, please be aware that several anti-virus scanning engines used will detect a virus in just about any software, VBA32 is particularly known for this, as well as several others.  Therefore, it is very typical for perfectly legitimate/clean files to have one, two, even three or more detections from the nearly 70 scanning engines used in a typical VirusTotal.com scan.

Email  (Troubleshooting Issues)

For CryptoPrevent, please see the CryptoPrevent Email FAQ here.

For d7x, please see the Email Configuration section of the d7x manual here.

All other applications, if you are having issues with GMail try the steps below:

GMail’s SMTP server is “smtp.gmail.com” and it can be accessed on port 465/SSL or port 587/TLS or StartTLS; select “Auto” for authentication if available.

Be certain to include the domain name (e.g. @gmail.com or @yourcustomdomain.com) in the SMTP username field.

For accounts without two factor authentication, enabling the “less secure application” feature may help:  https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps

Two factor authentication can complicate things as well, and when using this you will need an “application specific password” in order to connect properly to the server through this app.  Learn more and obtain application specific passwords here:  https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833?hl=en and you can manage them at this link:  https://security.google.com/settings/security/apppasswords

Finally, we have also had reports that Gmail will sometimes block what it considers a ‘suspicious login‘ and that it should alert you of this the next time you login to the webmail interface.  You should be notified that you can ‘unlock‘ your account by going to this link:  https://accounts.google.com/DisplayUnlockCaptcha  after which the account should be unlocked and email sending will no longer be blocked.

Digital Signatures and User Account Control

Most if not all of our applications are digitally signed.  Information from the digital signature is displayed in User Account Control pop-ups (requesting admin rights) prior to running the apps.

You can examine any digital certificate by clicking more info on one of these prompts, or by right-clicking on the file from Windows Explorer, selecting “Properties” from the bottom of the drop-down menu, and then selecting the “Digital Signatures” tab.

There are two issues that may occur related to Digital Signatures, both amount to the same symptom:

1. With some of our very old software, on some systems the signature was not correctly recognized as a trusted publisher, invoking the yellow/orange warning “User Account Control” box and displaying “unknown” as the publisher.  This should no longer be an issue; several years ago we moved away from StartSSL for our code signing certificates; most recently we have used SSL.com, which should be supported on all modern platforms “out of the box” and without update.

To resolve the issue, be sure and install the Trusted Root Certificates update from Microsoft/Windows Update.  If this does not appear in the updates list, you may manually download and install the package directly from Microsoft HERE for Windows XP.  Alternately, visit  which will prompt you to download the appropriate cert, open the file and select Install.

2. With some of our aging software (where a new version has not been released in several years) the pre-existing digital certificates that the application is signed with have expired.  An expired certificate will cause Windows to act as if there was no certificate at all, invoking the yellow/orange warning “User Account Control” box and displaying “unknown” as the publisher, rather than d7xTech, Inc.  This is because the certificate is designed to expire after a period of time (we choose the maximum 3-year certificates) and that “we just need to update the digital signature” on that file because it is over 3 years old; but this in no way indicates the software is malicious or infected.  You can still manually examine an expired digital certificate for validity as mentioned above, if you wish to make your own decision based on that.

Current versions of our software are signed with an Extended Validation (EV) certificate, meaning essentially that we (as a company, and myself as the owner) underwent a more stringent identity verification process before the EV certificate was issued; it also means we paid a good bit more for the EV certificate.  We chose to go with an EV certificate because it allows our software to download and slip past any initial Windows Smart Screen warnings/user prompts by establishing a “relationship” with the Smart Screen filter.  When an EV certificate is NOT present, Windows Smart Screen filter normally triggers a warning when software is either known to be malicious (of course) OR if the software not “well-known” according to some unknown Microsoft standard/logic (which ultimately amounts to not having the EV certificate.)

Digital Signatures and White-Label Software

If you are an IT services provider using our related software such as d7x or dSupportSuite, you may expect the ability to fully brand this “White-Label” software with your business logo and details.  Unfortunately, this is only partially true (without a lot of effort on your part) because the User Account Control dialog will always display information to the user from the file’s digital signature, specifically the original name of the software (before any white-label modifications) and of course the trusted publisher which is our company name.

This issue affects not only our software, but all software from anywhere else, because the trusted publisher information appearing on the User Account Control prompt of ANY application cannot be altered, except by “signing” the executable with a new digital signature.  Otherwise, User Account Control would be a pretty pointless feature, as all manner of malware could disguise itself as legitimate applications!

So how can you sign the executable with your own digital signature, specifying your own company name?  The process can be somewhat involved and requires paying for and obtaining an identity verification from a trusted certificate authority, such as SSL.com (now the least expensive company mentioned), Comodo, Verisign, Digicert, or StartSSL.  Granted this information may be a little outdated, the process of obtaining identity verification, a digital code signing certificate, and applying that to the executable is outlined in a now very old blog post called Digital Code Signing – What a Chore! if you are curious and maybe want to do this yourself.

CryptoPrevent IS a robust anti-virus/anti-malware software supplement, filling a huge gap that exists with traditional security solutions to provide protection against a growing multitude of new and emerging ransomware and other malicious software threats.  CryptoPrevent is NOT a replacement for anti-virus software, firewalls, or other security solutions, nor does it render backup software or user education useless.  As a company composed primarily of experienced professionals from the PC repair industry, we believe strongly in a layered security approach, combined with comprehensive backup software that is tested regularly, and user education focusing at a minimum on safe web browsing and email usage habits.

There is no software that will protect you in all cases.  Malicious software is forever evolving, and it will always be a cat and mouse game with both sides playing ‘catch up’ no matter which side of the situation you are on.  

That being said, there are more steps you can take to protect yourself even further, and to easily recover when something does slip through various defenses:

1. Backups – This is one of the most important steps you can take, and the most often overlooked or incorrectly implemented.  There are many options, so some personal research will need to be done to learn what best suits your particular needs, lifestyle and price point. Windows includes it’s own backup utilities (in later versions more than one, though not always easy to find or implement) and there are many 3rd party vendors offering solutions as well.  If you would like more assistance in choosing a solution, we would recommend contacting one of the qualified technicians in our Tech Directory.

A major issue with implementing backups is periodically verifying that they work as expected, including restoring the backed up data.  You must ensure your backup processes are working as intended in both backup AND restore operations, and you will appreciate having the knowledge and experience to restore data from them in a time of crisis.

Finally, it is also important to have multiple backups and even multiple locations to store them.  If you have backups stored on your system, ransomware can attempt to encrypt these as well, so disconnecting external drives containing backups and/or having offsite or secure cloud based backups is highly recommended.

2. Active/Updated Anti-Virus Software – CryptoPrevent can provide very effective protection for your system, but it is not a replacement for having active and current anti-virus software!  CryptoPrevent is designed as a supplement to other existing forms of security software, and uses several methods of protection that are very different from traditional anti-virus software; that being said, it is not designed to replace the traditionally proven forms of protection.  Consult our qualified technicians in the Tech Directory for additional support on choosing the best option for you.

3. Network and System Level Firewalls – Having firewalls at both the point of entry/exit to the internet as well as on the local systems themselves greatly increases your chances of preventing malicious attacks.  Most routers and even Windows itself have firewalls built in and enabled by default and should be left on!  There are also 3rd party options for firewalls at both the network and local system level that can greatly improve protections beyond the capabilities provided by most home routers and software firewall abilities.  Again consult our qualified technicians in the Tech Directory for additional support on choosing the best option for your environment.

4. Network Share Permissions – Most ransomware will try to encrypt files inside shared folders it may find on your network.  You can limit damage with network permissions for access control, by restricting write access only to users and groups who absolutely need it.  Anyone needing to access files in these locations can still do so with read-only access, but they could not modify the files; a protocol can be established for submission of the files to read-only shares by users without the write access.  Note this would not be a convenient or effective option in large environments or anywhere shared access to data is required in real-time.

5. User Education and Safe Internet Practices – When it comes down to it, this is by far the best protection against malicious infections of most all types. Especially when combined with CryptoPrevent and the above items, this knowledge will prevent a large majority of infections.  If you manage a group of users it is very important and in some cases a requirement to make sure they are aware of this information as well.

There are many items this topic will encompass, and many details for each; we can only cover a few in this FAQ, but some of the most important ones are:

There are many more safe practices to learn and good habits to develop!  To learn more, you can consult a qualified technician in the Tech Directory for additional information on ways to stay safe on the internet and protect yourself.

We recommend our Tech Directory so highly because these are technicians or shops that subscribe to our flagship product d7II.  By using this product they are in our eyes highly qualified technicians already, and should be able to assist you easily in any of the above items. We are also more than happy to help where we can, but please remember we are mainly available to support our products and not to provide broad and general technical support. We feel this is best left to the professionals in our Tech Directory!