[solved?] Skype virus

[Ænima]

-Don't use torrents

Regardless of communication protocol; it's not about the medium but the content that is being downloaded, so saying something as "Don't use torrents" it's a moot point, the same we can say about downloading "possible" infected files through HTTP or FTP.

Exactly. By that logic, we shouldn't use a web browser either.

also if you got Brutal Doom off PB, that's just asking for a virus or something of the sort.

*Toasted PC*

No. Seriously downloading anything from PB is a suicidal mission, you are lucky if your computer will get out in one peace.

I have no idea what you guys are talking about since I use PirateBay on a regular basis and have never had any problems.

You just need to be smart and know what you're downloading BEFOREHAND. You know, can use a .torrent magnet link to open and view the contents of a file BEFORE downloading it, if you don't trust the site's description of it. If you're trying to torrent "Breaking Bad season 2" and you see that the contents consist of only a 12MB .exe file, then duhhhhhh it's a virus.

I'd also like to point out that PB is actually one of the "cleaner" and less-shady sites compared to others such as SumoTorrent which advertise lots of "sponsored download links" (aka trojans) and only offer dead/seedless torrents just to lure you in and attract net traffic so that they can continue to make money off their ads.

[ibm5155]

free antivirus is good for a basic protection (and please, don't use avg..., if that thing didn't founded a fake antivirus I don't know what does that thing can do), like if you share some information by pendrive, most of the times when I pluged some of my friends pendrive on my computer I got some warnings about virus, also one thing that I like is on avast, that it can detect malicious websites before loading (also it sucks too thinking my c++ projects are virus >.< [well some of they are like but anyway...])...

Well, Torrent for me is like aptoide for andoid, it can have some legal content on it (like ubuntu iso and the rip commodore os iso) but, I don't know people who download things from torrent files legally, just look at pirate bay recent files, all of them are illegal files...

But one thing is true, torrents today have much less virus than the e-mule days (even more because the windows protection on that days didn't even exist, a simple file could read ram data from other software, change it, dell windows boot,...

Too bad there isn't more oldschool virus, today it's just that files who stole passwords and read what's app conversations from a light app ¬¬

EDIT

Please don't say "Only Download from Original Source" to me. I personally do, but a lot of people may not.

I don't too in most of the cases (at least only with windows software), and almost all the time I didn't got any warning, but I have some files with virus here. (not counting the websites that have a download to download your file, but before, you must avoid to install X files on your computer, then if you install babylon or others you'll try to uninstall, but when you uninstalled, you notice that you insalled a software called unsinstaller D:. For me that websites are worse than illegal torrent files)

[Torr Samaho]

Mmmm yes, but my point is: why do I need to run a free antivirus if it doesn't actually protect my PC (told you: since Windows 7 came out I had no virus alerts anymore).

You said earlier that you are a very considerate user (even using noscript and adblock). Of course this greatly reduces virus related risks. And you may argue that for considerate users the protection added by a free antivir solution doesn't outweigh its resources consumption. I personally still think that one should have the additional protection just in case, but I can understand if you, as considerate user, don't use it anymore.

The situation is very different for average users though. For average users the protection offered by a free antivir makes a big difference. Your earlier statements sounded as if free antivir solutions are useless and that nobody should use them. This is where I strongly disagree: Average Windows users definitely should use them.