Email zip folder question

[Mupen]

Hello all,

So a buddy sent me two zip files of our text books we need for class. One says under the file not virus scanned, i've right clicked to try and scan it before opening but nothing comes up to scan it. Is there a way to scan it before opening and downloading it.

Thanks.

[epLe]

Well first off its not any risk downloading or opening a zip archive, even if it contains a virus.

Then if it only contains documents you pretty safe, even without scanning them.

(some macro virus exist for older MS office packages but they are incredibly rare.)

[Mupen]

Thank you for the heads up

[Mupen]

smaller files you can upload to virustotal website that runs it through every major scanner software in a minute.

Thanks, I will be using that a lot now.

[Tackhisis]

Well first off its not any risk downloading or opening a zip archive

Most free archivers do not protect you from running an executable masked as a pdf document or such. They don't even propagate zone identifiers to the extracted files.

So no, unless you are using a real, properly configured product like WinRAR, you are vulnerable to viruses in zip archives.