00:00okay this is just a very brief introduction to a free service which I
00:06have to say is something I found more than useful over the years so what is
00:12virus total virus total is a free malware scanning service that brings
00:18together at present around 70 different malware scanning services it's actually
00:24been around for about 20 years now but has only become really popular in the
00:29past five six years or so I only wish I had known about it earlier the benefits
00:37of virus total are obvious it would take you ages to manually scan a file with 70
00:43different antivirus scanners one by one virus total does all this in a matter of
00:50seconds so the main advantage of virus total is that if one scanning service
00:57misses some piece of malware another may catch it I should stress however that
01:03this isn't a magic bullet but rather it can be one more layer of protection from
01:09internet malware we'll take a look at it in a moment but first why do you need it
01:17if you don't download and install software from the internet then you probably don't
01:22need to use this but most of us are downloading stuff from the internet all
01:26the time and if that's the case for you you should consider using this every
01:31time you do so in the days of Windows 9 5 9 8 me and even XP service part one the
01:39malware threat was very different internet banking was in its infancy even
01:44internet shopping was in its infancy most malware was in fact viruses hence the name
01:50virus total which just spread through the internet we can have it from people's
01:55computers as noisily as possible then money came into the picture now most
02:01malware is rootkits trojans another software that sits on your computer as
02:06quietly as possible doing everything it can to avoid detection and just waiting
02:13until the user goes to a banking site a shopping site or some other site where the
02:18user may enter their credit card information or other useful info and
02:23then stealing that information and using it in recent years ransomware has also
02:28become common here users get their computers infected with something that
02:33encrypts the hard drive effectively making it unusable until the user pays a
02:38ransom
02:40and then there's the threat of your computer or device becoming quote owned and
02:45quote by some individual or organization and used to carry out attacks elsewhere to
02:51cover their tracks and incriminate you at the same time with money as the
02:56incentive malicious hackers will go to great lengths to get their malware into
03:01your computer and today it's often large and well-funded criminal gangs who are
03:06behind these efforts there are many ways they can do this from so-called
03:11phishing emails to social engineering but here in the interest of brevity I'm only
03:16going to deal with one free software that you actually go looking for online some of
03:24the worst offenders here by the way are video downloaders file format converters
03:29and torrent software but bear in mind the malware can come bundled in free of
03:34charge with anything and anything that's free to begin with requires extra caution or you
03:41may find that you get more free gifts than you bargain for here is a random
03:47search I carried out for final format converters I didn't intend to go out
03:54looking for file format converters but a few years ago after using format factory an
04:01incredibly handy little program created by a Chinese developer in a moment of
04:05idleness I put the old exe which was still on my hard drive through virus total to my
04:13shock he came up positive for about two dozen kinds of malware shock because by
04:20this time I had already been using the thing for about five years originally it had
04:27glided past checks by Windows Defender effortlessly and the free antivirus I had
04:33installed on my computer talk about closing the barn door after the horses
04:39bolted but I immediately uninstalled it and vowed never to install anything again
04:44without scanning it thoroughly on virus total first still reasoning that the
04:51program itself was not necessarily malicious and that he could have been
04:56infected at the download site which I couldn't remember I decided to kick off my
05:00search for file format converters with format factory this time I didn't even
05:07get as far as downloading it to my hard drive before the antivirus software on my
05:12own computer blocked it so that left several others including free make which I
05:19already had on my hard drive but hadn't yet installed adapter Movavi hamster free AC
05:26coffee cup pics converter and BSC converter free make also came up positive as a
05:34general rule of thumb if something shows up as infected with malware by only one or
05:39two vendors the chances are very high that they are false positives that's when
05:44you have to decide for yourself if it's worth taking the risk if something shows up
05:49as infected by more than three vendors I would say the chances are very high that
05:54something really is wrong so as you just seen you can download a file to your
06:01computer or other device then run an online scan from the virus total site or
06:06you can scan a URL if you like there's also a browser add-on or extension which you
06:12can use but what about the site you download free software from apart from
06:19filehippo which you've just seen there are many other free software sites like
06:24file horse file puma god knows what the thing about animals is softpedia
06:30CNET and major geeks many sites like these actually use virus total themselves and or
06:38have their own virus scanning software so first of all an ironclad rule for
06:44downloading free software is to only go to reputable sites like the ones just
06:49mentioned however even though these are all reputable sites and some even
06:55guarantee that the files they offer for download a clean you can't just leave it
07:00at that download and install I'm going to suggest that you also scan the same files
07:08one more time on your own computer after downloading for reasons that will now
07:13become obvious okay so here you can see that I'm picking the exe files from the
07:19folder I put them in after downloading and letting virus total scan them as you
07:25can see the first few all turned out clean so hopefully this is how things
07:30should be for you and the files you download and scan to
07:38in a moment I'll skip to the end of the folder to make a point
07:42the last file came up as infected according to one vendor
07:51in these circumstances it's really up to you whether you take the risk of
07:55installing it in all probability this is a false positive because there's
08:00theoretically not a great deal of chance that all the major vendors would miss
08:04something like this however I have to stress that all the files in this folder
08:09were certified safe by a major download site now here's where things started
08:16getting interesting this file was downloaded from filehippo a much trusted
08:22download site I mentioned already which guarantees that the files it makes
08:27available for download are malware free
08:31pretty concerning a so here's what happens when you download from filehippo you get
08:42this guarantee I'm not showing this to pick on filehippo other download sites had
08:48problems with this application too as you'll see in a moment I then tried
08:56downloading the same software from download crew it wouldn't download didn't get
09:02past the error checking stage
09:06then I tried softonic which is another well-trusted site we saw their guarantee
09:11earlier in this video
09:14and wow once again this guaranteed safe software was found by virus total to be
09:27crawling in malware including apparently malware designed specifically for softonic
09:33so to sum up I'm not saying don't use these free software sites most of the stuff on
09:40them is indeed safe to use and I download software from these sites regularly but
09:46do proceed with caution as the warning would have it and give everything you
09:51download an extra scan before installing
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