At the risk of asking an incredibly stupid question, but if I only ever torrent video/audio, scan everything I download with defender, and only ever use a recently updated version of vlc, what’s the risk?
I remember getting viruses in ye olden days, but afaik the main problem is malware now.
Movies and audio are very rarely infected, almost never. That depends on bugged software, so that you can be relatively safe of.
Executables… well… no anti virus can protect you in reality from dumb double-clicks. This is because viruses are trained against anti virus software until they can’t be recognized. There are mathematically an infinite number of patterns to run a program to trick all kinds of anti viruses. So in reality you can’t be safe. Once that’s done by an expert virus creator, the best you have to protect you is a behavioral detection of viruses, which may or may not work.
So, don’t rely on anti viruses. They barely protect you from script kiddies and legacy viruses.
Risk is practically nothing in your case, because you’re being careful, and know what you’re doing. You won’t run a binary when you were expecting the Barbie movie, for example.
If you were downloading binaries, then your risk is significant, but even then, unless you’re downloading new releases immediately, it’s likely that your antivirus will catch the new popular ransomware after a few days, when a few thousands of people have become infected. Governments won’t employ valuable zero-days on any rando who just wants to see their new isekai episode.
![ATTENTION: 1337X IS NO LONGER SAFE [Reposted from Reddit]](https://lm.madiator.cloud/pictrs/image/46fa2d88-10a1-4ec6-81ee-c487321a15e1.jpeg){kind=link}
At the risk of asking an incredibly stupid question, but if I only ever torrent video/audio, scan everything I download with defender, and only ever use a recently updated version of vlc, what’s the risk?
I remember getting viruses in ye olden days, but afaik the main problem is malware now.
Movies and audio are very rarely infected, almost never. That depends on bugged software, so that you can be relatively safe of.
Executables… well… no anti virus can protect you in reality from dumb double-clicks. This is because viruses are trained against anti virus software until they can’t be recognized. There are mathematically an infinite number of patterns to run a program to trick all kinds of anti viruses. So in reality you can’t be safe. Once that’s done by an expert virus creator, the best you have to protect you is a behavioral detection of viruses, which may or may not work.
So, don’t rely on anti viruses. They barely protect you from script kiddies and legacy viruses.
Risk is practically nothing in your case, because you’re being careful, and know what you’re doing. You won’t run a binary when you were expecting the Barbie movie, for example.
If you were downloading binaries, then your risk is significant, but even then, unless you’re downloading new releases immediately, it’s likely that your antivirus will catch the new popular ransomware after a few days, when a few thousands of people have become infected. Governments won’t employ valuable zero-days on any rando who just wants to see their new isekai episode.
If you’re using Windows, just make sure file extensions are visible and that your file isn’t named Movie.mp4.exe