Aqua-Soft ForumsI was wondering, can downloading music/sound effects off the internet infect your computer with a virus/spyware etc... ?
Originally I tohught yes, but then someone said that only programs can contain stuff like that...
I'm kinda confused.
Viruses in music downloads?
In short... ANY file downloaded from the internet can contain a virus or spyware.
I'm no expert, but I can't find any explanation for how a song or an image can contain a virus.. They have no coding or anything....
well technically it's possible to put a virus into a song, but it's so much more common to find them in programs. They are hard to get into songs because there really nothing to a song that needs to run code
Okay. So can I be relatively sure I'm safe when downloading sound effects for movies and stuff?
if its listed as an mp3 its rare to get malware included, however there are exploits in avi files when run through Quicktime and or Windows Media.
General rule of thumb, avoid any .exe files or compressed files you are unsure about such as .zip or .rar files.
In all honesty if your running a half decent AV it should pick up anything you download its all about boxing clever.
OK, thanks folks.
they music itself cant effect you, but it can contain instructions and the ability to hijack the media player. Hence MS releasing patches to fix this.
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2002/MP3virus.html
There is an interesting article on the fact.
Yeah, I read that just now. Does that mean iTunes is safe? Has there been an incident in which this has occured or are they just saying its POSSIBLE ?