Unknown Publisher Warnings

Software that's distributed over the Internet is traditionally "signed" using a "code signing certificate." A code signing certificate allows an authority ostensibly worthy of trust to vouch for whoever is distributing the software in question.

At least, that's how it's supposed to work.

In reality, signing distributed software with a code signing certificate doesn't do a lot beyond suppressing the scary messages that some web browsers and / or Windows might display when you download or install software.

Code signing certificates were never inexpensive, but in the summer of 2023 they quadrupled in price... for no detectable reason.

The best that can be said of code signing is that it offers users of signed software a degree of assurance that what they're installing really came from the publisher who purports to have created it. If you're downloading Alchemy Mindworks software from the Alchemy Mindworks web site, you can enjoy a substantially greater level of confidence that this is so than a digital certificate would have afforded you.

Nobody gets to upload software to our server except for us.

In the interest of keeping our costs — and hence our prices — at their lowest possible levels, we've decided to forego signing our downloadable software going forward. Depending on your choice of web browsers, you might see a warning like the one above to the effect that the publisher of our software is unknown or couldn't be verified.

We've created an effortless way to disable these warnings — please click on the foregoing link for a quick walk-through.

Alternately, you can safely ignore these warnings. If you downloaded our software from our server, know that it was uploaded by us, and it's entirely safe to install and run.

Should you have any concerns about our software, the security thereof or the issue of code signing, we invite you to contact us. We'll be pleased to explain this situation in as much detail as you require, and the message you receive will be signed by a living, breathing Alchemy Mindworks staff member — not a certificate.