Site sizes up suspicious attachments

You might be downloading some “free” software and not know there’s a virus tucked inside that innocently named program. Or someone’s sent you a suspicious attachment and you don’t trust your desktop virus program to handle the task.

One option is to use the online virus and malware-tracking site Virustotal.com.

The site allows users to upload suspect files, then offers a good or bad report.

It’s free, and its strength is using about 20 different anti-virus scanners to make sure you get a solid report.

Virustotal limits the size of files uploaded to roughly 20 megabytes. It then scans and provides a clean or infected summary. The nicest feature: When you upload a file that someone else previously tested, Virustotal gives you an instant report.

We uploaded a variety of files, including some PDF files of large size. Virustotal scanned them all fairly quickly. We did note, however, that some files took longer to scan; this might be due to overall Net traffic or site activity. The site has a colored-light monitor to report on how much activity the site is handling.