Obviously, if you have any doubts, don't download it. I guess my only point is that we don't really have evidence to conclusively substantiate either position, and I wish we did! So, could it be completely fine? Just a guy that stays behind the curtain and writes image software in free time for the world to use? Absolutely, yes.Ĭould it also be a nefarious group hiding a payload in an obscure program just under the radar enough to linger? Absolutely, yes. Whether that's via online community engagement, or review response, it isn't complete radio-silence. Most software published by individuals today receives some form of engagement from the developer. Declaring being careful is great, but I might suggest others would disagree, especially in today's world filled with software available via FOSS, independent audit, platform publishing, or even simple hash verification. But, your story and that of many others doesn't really apply to the topic at hand. That seems to be quite common-it's been around a while. Very glad you have used it for many years with success. I thought I would check in here to see if anyone else has happened to determine more about this application and what's behind the curtain. I really liked the feature list for this, but it's just a bit shady for my tastes. Normally, you would have some sort of audit trail back to a developer or company or something. Even though it has been around a long time, in this day and age especially, it's very odd.

Not even a country of origin for this software. There is no engagement from a developer or company that I can find at all. I saw several reports of folks getting no response from the email. Apart from a generic email address for support that gets published on the site, I can't really find anything. I wanted to learn a little bit more about this application, but despite my best Google-fu, I didn't have much luck. On Wikipedia, it instead shows 'FastStone Soft.' On the website, you can find 'FastStone Corporation' as the entity behind it. There are some companion programs, as well, from the same place like FastStone Capture. The program has been around for quite some time, and had a recent update in August to version 7.7. I was recently exploring some various image software offerings, and quite a few folks showed interest in the FastStone Image Viewer program.

Faststone view