Subject: Are FTP sites safe from viruses

16. *****
 Q: Am I safe against viruses if download files from FTP sites?

 A: I'll give some information on this from an FTP moderator's point
of view. The official stand is the following directly from one of
our public documents:
   No liability is accepted for the consequences of using,
   or  the  inability  to  use,  any  of  these  files. No
   absolute guarantees are given that these  programs  are
   clean   from   nasties,  although  none  have  been  in
   evidence. Please duly observe shareware rules  wherever
   indicated.
But remember that there are no absolute guarantees _whatever_ your
sources are. There have even been cases of contaminated commercial
products. So the safety factor will never be a 100 per cent whether
you keep on downloading from ftp sites or not. At worst you can even
catch a virus if you buy a new machine (this has been known to
happen). On the other hand, the scare should not be exaggerated.
   It is certainly a good idea to employ two or three good virus
testers / protectors such as McAfee's /pc/virus/scn-229e.zip and
/pc/virus/fp-221.zip by Fridrik Skulason (or whatever are the
current version numbers). There are others too in our /pc/virus
directory. I have one small additional trick up in my sleeve. Put my
dtetimal.exe in your autoexec.bat. If dtetimal gets contaminated, it
will loudly inform you of the fact. Dtetimal is part of my
/pc/ts/tsutil41.zip (or whatever version number is current) package
at garbo.uwasa.fi archives. Also use /pc/sysutil/chksum.zip to
always check at least your io.sys, msdos.sys, and command.com at
boot time. You then have a better chance of being alerted if you use
these measures.
   There is a good batch scanz.bat in /pc/ts/tsbat47.zip (or
whatever version number is the current) to automate the virus
checking of zipped (.zip) archives.
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