Even people who are careful about avoiding computer viruses can still get fooled. Here is a great tool to give you another layer of safety.
Unfortunately, one of the most common ways we get viruses these days is by either downloading them when we download a program or download our file or by opening an email from a so-called trusted source that has a link in it.
First Step: Update Browser Settings
So to use this technique, the first thing we want to do is prevent our browser from automatically opening things we download.
Google Chrome Instructions:
1. Go to the three dots in the upper right corner and left-click them to access your Chrome menu.
2. Click Settings.
3. In the ‘Search settings’ bar at the top, type downloads.
4. At the bottom under location, it says ‘Show downloads when they’re done.’ If this is turned on, that means you’ve set the browser to automatically open certain types of files after they’ve been downloaded. You want to toggle that to turn it off.
5. The second thing we want to do, ‘Ask where to save each file before downloading.’ Generally, it’ll just put it in the downloads folder, which is fine, or you can ask where to save it.
Now I think this is a good idea to leave this on because it will automatically remind you that you’re downloading something and you’re saving it to your computer.
Firefox Instructions:
1. Go to the three lines in the upper right corner and left-click them to access your Chrome menu.
2. Click Settings.
3. In the General menu, scroll down to where it says ‘Files and Applications.’
4. Under the Applications section, you’ll see a box: Choose how Firefox handles the files you download from the web or the applications you use while browsing.
5. You should really have all of these set to Always ask.
Okay, so what we’ve done is we’ve told our browsers to not automatically open files that we’ve downloaded. This way we can use this really neat tool I’m about to show you and be able to scan those files for viruses.
Computer Viruses Protection Tool
The tool is called VirusTotal. Go to virustotal.com. This is a really neat program because it’s owned by Google and will actually take any file that you upload and it’ll scan it through at least 60 of the best antivirus programs out there.
File Upload Option
For the video demonstration, I downloaded a file from my website EZBreakouts.com (as you guys know, this is my trading website), and uploaded it to the website to show you what it looks like.
VirusTotal ran its full scan and you can see all of the different virus programs that it checked the file through like Ad-Aware, Avast, AVG, and Baidu. It scanned my file to make sure it was free of viruses.
URL Checker
I also checked an email that was sent from a company called Zendesk that said to sign up for some kind of webinar. Now Zendesk I normally trust. But who knows, maybe they’re sending me a virus-riddled link.
I right-clicked on the button and clicked the Copy link address option. Then I went back to VirusTotal and clicked the URL tab. Paste that link right into the search. After their scan, it indicated No engines detected this URL.
Conclusion
In summary, VirusTotal is a very neat tool you can use to scan any link, any file somebody sends you, or any file you download, to make sure it doesn’t have any viruses. It’s going to run that virus protection over more than 60 different virus software programs.
I hope you found this tool useful.
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Thanks for watching, and if you haven’t already, please feel free to download our EZ Trading Computers Complete Guide to Trading Computers by clicking the link. This guide is packed with great tips so you can totally optimize your trading experience.
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If you have any trading computer technology questions, you can always call us at 800-387-5250.