You just received an email from a person you know and there’s an attachment. The problem is you weren’t expecting either!
Is the attached file OK or did the other person’s computer get infected and send that attachment?
You can play “attachment roulette” and hope OR you can in less than a minute or two let more than 30 anti-virus programs check that file for you.
And all at no charge! Nice.
The free file scanning service is provided by Virus Total and is part of the tool kit of anyone who deals with malicious software like viruses. As an IT consultant to small and medium sized businesses who provides computer systems security as part of my services I’m a regular visitor here.
To use the free VirusTotal file scanning service just follow these simple steps:
- Save the attached file to your computer where you can easily find it like your desktop or other folder.
- Open your web browser and go to http://www.virustotal.com
- On the page is a box to send over the file in question. To the right side you will see a button titled “Browse..”
- Click on the “Browse..” button and navigate to where you saved the file.
- Double-click on the file name and you will be returned to the submission box with the path and file name in the entry area.
- Click the “Send file” and the VirusTotal virus scanners go to work on the file.
- Typically within 30-60 seconds you will have the results as shown in the sample below. If there are names in the “Result” column then the file almost certainly contains malicious software such as a virus. DO NOT OPEN!
Likewise you might want to contact the sending party and then ask yourself “why didn’t your anti-virus software catch this?”
