A few days ago I uploaded a freshly-built, Solar2D-generated Android APK file for an app to my website to download onto my phone. The file disappeared quickly, and there was a virus alert message --surely a “false positive” since I had complete control over the file from creation (a few hours earlier). I checked with the website hosting service, and they confirm that they have an automated anti-malware service running. I can live with that, work around it, but nonetheless, what is the best way to avoid an issue like this? I notice that a very slightly different build of my app does not generate the false positive. I’m concerned that if I upload other files that generate false positives either on my web server or, for example, on a service like Google Drive, that the tagged files may lead to blocked access or worse. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.
Most websites and email providers consider apk files like exe and DLL files
so to share your apk, use websites like https://www.diawi.com/
Hello, you wrote:
“Most websites and email providers consider apk files like exe and DLL files
so to share your apk”
Thank you very much for your reply. That may be true in some circumstances, but it doesn’t match my experience. In earlier builds of the app in question I had no issues uploading apk files, as recently as last month. What’s more interesting is that I uploaded TWO apk files this time --a “standard” and “pro” version of the same app. The standard version was tagged as malware and deleted almost immediately. The pro version had no problems.
But… this no longer matters. I uploaded the file again today after I asked the hosting service to give it a try. NO WARNINGS! Maybe they changed something. Maybe the heuristics in their anti-malware service were updated. In any case the “false positive” has evaporated.
For anyone else following along, and for future reference, I found it useful running the file through the service at VirusTotal which indicated no malware. This helped satisfy me (and the hosting service) that the alert was a false positive. I came upon this suggested tool from a thread on the B4X message boards for “Anywhere Software” (a decent multi-platform solution similar to Corona/Solar2D but, for me at least, not nearly as useful). Here’s that thread:
[solved] Investigating Google's false positive virus checks | B4X Programming Forum