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On the Internet we download many files a day. Some of these are safe but some are infected by virus or other malicious programs. Although we use Antivirus programs to protect our system, but it will be much better to scan a file before downloading on your system. If the download source is unknown or new, then you must check.
VIrusTotal is an online security website which can help you in this. This website scan download links Worth more than 40 different security tools to check whether the file is safe to download or infected.
To scan for a file, right click on the download link and select Copy link address.
Now open new tab in browser and write Virustotal.com and press enter. In the new website, paste the link in the text field and click Submit URL. VirusTotal will send the link to its engine which will check the link against several URL analysis tools to see if the site is black listed as a malicious site already.
After few seconds, it will show you the scan result. If nothing is detected in the scan, you can proceed with the downloading.
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Integrating it with FireFox: This security tool is also available as add-on for the FireFox which is called VTZilla. So you do not need to go to the website each time you want to check a link. After installing this tool in your FireFox, you will see a new toolbar from which you can see the status of the website. It also add an option in the right click menu. just right on the link you want to scan and you will find an option " select Scan with VirusTotal." This option will open the scan results in the new tab for the selected URL.
Although the security tool use more than 40 scanners to check the website but you can not blindly trust on it. There may be the new threat on the link which is not listed in all the scanners. So you should use a good antivirus and Internet security solution on your system.
If you are Google Chrome user, you do not need to go for this tool. Just update your web browser. Latest version of Google Chrome has this security service in-built which notifies user when they try to download files from malicious sources.
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