[v3rmello]

VTFC got into legal trouble.
NoDistribute apparently lied about non-distributing, and their website is also broken.
VirusCheckMate shut down permanently last week. (Huge disappointment...)

There also used to be ~10 others that didn't distribute. Literally every single one is shutdown or sold now.

I'm fully aware that there's paid ones out there that are cheap. Thing is, I don't really feel like hassling with setting all the payments up and etc.

There's probably none at the moment, but does ANYONE know of a free non-distributing VT-alternative? I really don't care about what the service is as a whole unless it's got decent upload speeds and most of the top engines. (avast, mcafee, mbam, eset, bitdefender, avg, symantec, etc etc etc)

If you could list a few links, (if any), it would actually be tremendously helpful. Don't wanna spread my botnet anywhere unless I know it's crypted well enough.

Thanks in advance HF

[v3rmello]

How legal is it? I'd be interested in developing one.

From what I've heard, it's perfectly legal...unless you market it towards malware developers and make it seem like a tool for malicious purposes. That's exactly what VTFC did, and now the owners are sitting in jail as we speak...So if you're going to decide to start making one, I'd try to not put any hints of malicious activity anywhere on the site or advertisements of it. There's been no legal incidents, of what I've heard, due to legit, ethical, legal non-distributive online scanners. I think that the only problem would be money, as all the other scanners stay up because they make money by selling user samples to all the cybersecurity companies for research. I really wouldn't mind user-submitted ads on the site, and I think it would be a good idea if you ever want to make it a for-profit thing. The API for VTFC is out there, so that's a hassle removed.

If you do decide to start doing something like this, I'm positive it'd be helpful to a lot of people here, including me, as there's not really ANY option for a free non-distributing VT alternative at the moment.

[v3rmello]

Thank you for your insightful response. Especially about the API. I'm wondering what the drawback is.. Extensive server costs?

I'm imagining that server costs wouldn't be too pricy at all. There's already free ones out there like infinityfree, and bitballoon (for web). I haven't had experience with infinityfree so I can't give you an upfront review, but from what I've heard they make enough money off of ads on THEIR site to run the free servers. According to their site, there's infinite up/down bandwidth, storage, and there's no time limits or any of that shit either. Apparently they never force ads on your sites either, which is really nice for a free host. Of course, read reviews and such before you make a final verdict, and you should definitely pay if better server specs are required, such as SSDs.

Also, about the API. I'm 99.999% sure that VTFC uses VirusCheckMate's API. I can't link yet because I'm under 50 posts, but a quick search for "viruscheckmate api" should have the documentation as the 1st result.

It's the one NoDistribute (aka YesDistribute) uses as well.