Cant find virus-free file

Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 4:31 am

I recently accessed usenet after being away for a couple of years. I found the binary I was after but every single copy that I downloaded seemed to have virus in it.

I dont remember it being this bad. Is this common? Any tips for spotting the file with the viruses in them (prior to downloading them)?

Maybe I should have a go with BitTorrent instead - or is this just as bad?

Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 4:54 am

All I can say is I've downloaded over 200 movies from this site and not once did I get one with a virus in it... Not to say that there aren't any files here with virus's.. Thus far I've been lucky I guess but my virus scanner will detect, and delete any virus before any files are written to my hard drive. This has been the cleanest site I've found. But as any site on the net you download from you run the risk of picking up a virus. Just the way it is. To be safe stick to the movie's or whatever files you're downloading with positive feedback. Happy hunting!

Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 5:56 am

only ever get .exe files from the source, not from a third party site so don't really know about usenet
but this is a good program to look up if you are going to start downloading executables

http://www.sandboxie.com/

Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 6:20 am

gsxr_rider wrote:

only ever get .exe files from the source, not from a third party site so don't really know about usenet
but this is a good program to look up if you are going to start downloading executables

http://www.sandboxie.com/

^^^what he said.

sandboxie is great, even if you download and run a nasty....if you do it in a sandbox it cant infect your system.....

Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 6:28 am

Stay away from usenet, it may have been good in its day but unless you know what you are doing with it it is a minefield.

Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 6:39 am

Checking online with most downloads of exe files even with torrents can be good Very Happy

Make sure they are real viruses some AVs can be very sensitive the files could be false positives.
If the executables are not that big you can check them online

Jotti's malware scan

http://virusscan.jotti.org/en-gb

VirusTotal

https://www.virustotal.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antivirus_software#Problems_caused_by_false_positives

A MD5 check can also help

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2012 3:39 am

Thanks everybody