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AsianAtheist
AsianAtheist asked in Computers & InternetSecurity · 9 years ago

virus from a text file?

Can you get a virus from downloading a text file? (.txt)

4 Answers

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  • Anonymous
    9 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    Text files cannot have viruses since they're all in ASCII.

  • ?
    Lv 7
    9 years ago

    Not really. It is not executable unless it is batch (.bat) or command (.cmd) file containing some scripts that runs another program. Nevertheless, it is not actually considered as a virus.

    However, you may have heard of a sample virus signature that is in a text file called EICAR.TXT which is used to test if your antivirus program is running. It's a safe sample and does nothing to your computer. Read about it here:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EICAR_test_file

    http://eicar.org/86-0-Intended-use.html

  • Mr Awesome
    Lv 4
    9 years ago

    yes it is possible its happened to me before so make sure what youre downloading is legit and if anything happens download malawarebytes www.malawarebytes.org

  • Rocky
    Lv 6
    9 years ago

    yes

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