2013 11 22 Another Great Antivirus Tool: virustotal.com

We need all the help we can get in our efforts to keep viruses and malware away from our computers.  One great and free tool is an online scanning service named VirusTotal.

Upload a suspect file to VirusTotal and it will scan it as you wait using a large number of different scanners.  It produces a report at the end of the scan detailing the results for each virus scanner it used.

It can also scan websites.  Click on the scan a URL hotspot on the VirusTotal webpage, then type in the URL to the questionable website.  It will do a live scan and show you the results.  It would be interesting to scan known good and known infected websites.

I recommend you take care what files you upload.  You likely don’t want to upload confidential material.  It’s not a good practice, and may be unlawful depending the content of the uploaded file.  Also, VirusTotal scans a tremendous number of files each day.  They will let you know if they’ve already scanned that file and give you the option of viewing the results of the existing scan or rescanning the file.  You may have to wait a bit for them to scan your file due to heavy demand for their service.  They present you with your position in the scanning queue if that’s the case.  It’s worth the wait!

—
Dennis Strain
Enclave Managed Networks
Box 365, Smithers, BC, Canada V0J 2N0

dstrain@bcenclave.ca
877-877-8793 toll free phone & fax

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