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But most of these online antivirus scanners did not have the ability to remove or clean any malware they found — they were mere detection tools. You can now use web based multiengine antivirus scanners, which are basically online services that allow anyone to upload files and have them scanned with a number of different antivirus programs, including the majority of the most popular ones like Avast, Bitdefender, Kaspersky, Malware, Panda, and Symantec.

There are a handful of such services now available, with the most popular being VirusTotal. It scans the files you upload with over 70 scanners, confirming whether it contains any malware like virus, Trojans, worms, and more.

VirusTotal is one of the foremost multiengine online virus scanners around. It launched all the way back in , but was acquired by Google in This means that it has access to the best infrastructure, when compared to its competitors, and the most antivirus engines. This is a very feature rich service, and can not only scan your files, but also comes with URL scanning, additional information on the analyzed files, support for multiple languages, as well as voting and comments.

If anything, the community aspects of VirusTotal are second to none. In terms of its UI, VirusTotal is the cleanest of the bunch. It puts up a handy safe-o-meter that lets you gauge at a glance whether your chosen file is safe or not. And you can also click on the tabs to view detailed information about the product or company, version numbers, even original file name. And not only can you scan files, VirusTotal can also check if a website is safe to visit — very much similar to a good browser or internet security suite that come with browser addon.

You can scan and analyze URLs to double check whether you should proceed to visit, or avoid suspicious sites altogether. VirusTotal is simple enough to use. Either drag the file that you wish to scan into the selection box on the VirusTotal website , or click on the Choose File button and navigate to it.

Once the upload is complete, the service will begin scanning the file using all the scanning engines it has at its disposal. After the scans are completed, you are presented with a summary page that contains the results of all the individual scans. You can use VirusTotal to not just scan program installers, executables and firmware files, but the service can be used to detect malware in any file — from Word documents and PDFs to images, sounds and videos. For common files, you will probably see a popup that notifies you that your file has already been analyzed recently.

You can either view the analysis, or if the date was months ago, reanalyze it. If your file gets a clean bill of health from these scans, there is a fair chance that it does not come packing malware. In case of a false positive, you can also perform a web search on the file name and often find people discussing whether it is a virus or not. That is all fine and dandy. But how to use the service to scan the files you want to download before you download them?

Glad you asked, because not only are there multiple ways to send files to VirusTotal, there are also a couple different ways you can make sure what you are downloading is safe. The service takes files from web, email, browser extensions, desktop programs and mobile apps, and even comes with a free public API.

The risks Inadvertently allowing viruses on to your computer — from both websites and peer-to-peer file-sharing programs. Inadvertently installing adware that enables annoying popup advertisements. Installing spyware that enables criminals to obtain private information for financial gain or identity theft. Having your firewall breached, especially when using peer-to-peer file-sharing programs. Breaching copyright. Although downloading free music, videos and software could be tempting, it is illegal to pirate material that is under copyright.

Download executable files. These are files used by programs to run on your computer. If you want to scan a. You can spot this by mousing over the link and looking at the address in your browser.

Next, head to VirusTotal. This tool has been owned by Google since Click the search button or press Enter to scan the file. VirusTotal will download the file you specified to its servers and scan it with a large number of different antivirus engines. If other people have recently scanned the file, VirusTotal will show you the recent scan results. This means it should be clean.

In fact, not two days after publishing this article, our example file—CCleaner 5. In some cases, the opinion may be near unanimous. In other cases, only a few antivirus tools may have a problem with the file. This is often a false positive, though in certain circumstances it could be that some antivirus tools have spotted new malware before others. You can scroll down to see which antivirus tools had a problem with the file, view more details about the file, and see community comments about whether the URL is safe or not.

In some cases, for example, it may just be flagged for including bundled crapware, which is easily bypassable. To make this process easier, the VirusTotal project offers browser extensions.

Download the appropriate extension and you can right-click a link and select the VirusTotal option to quickly scan it and see the results. If VirusTotal is unanimous that a file is dangerous, you should stay away. If the results are mixed, you should be careful, but you may want to examine the more detailed antivirus results to see why they say the file is dangerous.

Browse All iPhone Articles Browse All Mac Articles Are you curious if a certain. Check out our directory below to see. Keeping track of what executables are running on your PC is a great first step to protect your privacy and security.

Want even more security and privacy? Consider trying out our free GlassWire Firewall app. GlassWire helps you see the network behavior of the apps on your PC in real-time. By Ken GlassWire. Last updated November 19, Check it with Windows itself 2. Upload the file to VirusTotal 3. Who is the publisher?