My antivirus flagged a Solomon book
The Solomon library includes thousands of public-domain books, many of them scanned decades ago with early PDF software. A few antivirus apps, mostly Norton, Avast and AVG and sometimes Avira, can mistake the way some of those old files are put together for a threat and move them to quarantine. The alert usually has a name like PDF:MalwareX-gen [Phish] or PHISH/PDF.Agent.
It's a false alarm. Here's why, and what you can do.
Is my computer at risk?
No. The flagged files are scanned pages of old books. They contain no programs, no scripts and no downloads, and opening them can't run anything on your computer.
Windows Defender and almost every other antivirus engine find nothing in them. In the case we investigated, 58 of the 63 engines on VirusTotal reported the file as clean; the few that flagged it were generic “this looks like a phishing PDF” rules, not a known threat.
What to do
Leave it in quarantine
Nothing else is affected. The rest of your library works normally; you just won't have that one book.
Restore it
Open your antivirus app and find its Quarantine or History list. Select the book and choose Restore, then Allow or Exclude so it isn't flagged again.
Ask us first
Not comfortable restoring it? Email us the file name from the alert and we'll look at that exact file for you.
Why it happens
Antivirus apps use rules that look for the general shape of a dangerous file, not just known threats. Some old PDFs carry leftovers from the scanners that made them, like an empty form or edits tacked onto the end of the file. Modern phishing PDFs use the same building blocks, so a strict rule can catch an old, harmless book by mistake. Tell us which file was flagged and we'll report the false alarm to the antivirus company so they can fix their rule.
Still unsure?
Email support@solomonsurvivaltech.com with the file name and your antivirus app's name, and we'll take a look.