Is Browser Tamer a Malware?

According to VirusTotal BT is a malware, but that’s not true:

First, only 2 out of 68 antiviruses shows that, mostly ones we never heard of. Why do they consider it and what does exactly BT do?

According to SysInternals, BT contacts www.aloneguid.uk (this website). This is done in order to check if there’s an update to this version, and to report the start event to my own analytics platform. The information is minimal and only reports BT version. Those antiviruses are just too sensitive and have a lot of false positives.

This is the relevant piece of C++ code that posts it:

void track_sys_start() {
   alg::tracker t{ SysAppName, Version };
   t.track(map<string, string> {
      { "event", "start" }
   });
}

This is performed only once, during first time you use BT or upgrade it.

2. It does set some registry keys in order to register itself as a browser:

VirusTotal Jujubox or VirusTotal Observer does not detect anything out of order.

Zenbox does show something that might explain malware identification, specifically opening chrome.exe and firefox.exe files as it seems they are installed on that box:

The entire purpose of opening them in new versions is to grab browser icon to display to you. I don’t ship stock browser icons with BT because I don’t know which browsers you are going to use, so icons are extracted from browser binaries’ resources themselves. This also makes them always fresh.

Summary

So is it safe? It is for me. System utilities do perform some actions that may be considered “harmful” but that depends on what you think is harmful. I’ve created BT for myself and use it daily, so adding something harmful that would destroy my system or report personal information to outside is big no. A simplest browser web page will collect x100 more personal information comparing to BT and no one complains. At the end of the day it’s entirely up to you!

If you’re wondering whether BT is safe to use, I can assure you that it is. BT is a system utility that I developed for my own needs and convenience. It does some things that might seem “harmful” to some machines, but that’s a matter of perspective. I wouldn’t put anything harmful in BT that would damage my system or leak my personal information to anyone. In fact, BT is much more privacy-friendly than most software out there that collect tons of data about you without your consent. So you don’t have to worry about BT spying on you or messing up your system.

Ultimately it’s entirely up to you whether you want to use it or not.

P.S. Browser Tamer is a browser automation system utility done in spare time by myself. Official page is located here.