Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
Depending on where you're downloading your music files from, you may or may not be downloading a virus instead.
Is it possible to get a virus from a music download?
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As with all things, it depends.
If by "music download" you mean that you are downloading music files, MP3's, and the equivalent from trustworthy sources, then the news is good.
But if you mean something else, well, then things could be very bad indeed.
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Music files such as MP3, WAV, and the like are highly unlikely to contain viruses. In theory I suppose, they could, but as I said it's highly unlikely and I've certainly never heard of one.
If you mean downloading music tools and programs, then you need to be very careful. Anything that's a program; a music player or a peer-to-peer networking program could contain viruses, spyware, or both. In fact, the peer-to-peer file sharing program Kazaa is notorious for the spyware that it carries with it.
Finally, if you're downloading from an untrustworthy site, all sorts of things are possible. It's quite possible that a site offering what it claims is a music file could, instead, be offering a different type of file entirely. Including a virus.
Article C2190 - September 18, 2004
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
For people who use Limewire, It's ok maybe to download ONE or TWO songs you want really badly a month.. but don't go crazy and download everything you think you might like... and you have to be POSITIVE that it's not a virus
Some Precautions to take would be:
If the Song/Video/Whatever contains only lowercase letters (i know it sounds stupid, but i tested it out. First lowercase download was infected with spyware)
If it has porn in the title, Don't download it obviously
If the song is Really small in file size, or has a short length (as in 0:01-0:30 or so), Its a virus most likely
And if its title is virus, It's probably a virus
Also, Don't risk downloading ANY programs from Limewire. I wouldn't be to sure about any videos either.
Posted by: Kenny at July 12, 2009 6:18 PMSee i have a Mac. Problem solved. Limewire is a free iTunes for me. yes i have downloaded viruses but they just sit there and wait for me to delete them. iChill w/ Virises lol hehehe |_ O |_ iHAPPY
Posted by: Ben at October 6, 2009 11:28 AMi just purchased a pc two days ago, when i went on limewire AND paid to suscribe (included protection)and to youtube to check if it was the right song. I caught the only virus! Not only did I dish out cash to purchase this BRAND NEW PC, but add to that the repair I had to have them make on it's very first day of me having it!!! Now I'm panicking because I want to download lost songs onto my IPOD and don't trust that it will happen again although I had another program to protect my pc installed.
Posted by: Maggie at August 2, 2010 9:53 AMWhat if a person has a Speech recognition software on their machine which is capable of decoding 2Hz sound as 0(bit) and 4Hz sound as 1 (bit) and someone records a song in mp3/whatever format with all these 0's and 1's sounds in it and it start sending low level "Hz" information to tell the voice recognizer software to convert sound of those 2Hz to 0 and 4Hz as 1, then using this binary code, someone can infect a PC/system by placing some code in computer system (anywhere) to get the virus going????
Just wondering so that no one will get infected if someone freaky person in going in this direction... in coming future.
Regards
Posted by: Arun at September 8, 2011 12:44 PMArun Sangal
Denver, USA
It's possible that..
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1. A file itself is not infected / contains a virus...BUT just by listening it, your computer system can get infected with a virus.
Arun Sangal
Posted by: Arun at September 8, 2011 12:47 PMDenver, USA