Virus reports - Microsoft Defender
Hi Digital people -

There has been, in the last two weeks, an increase in virus reports about RARed files. After investigating several of these in detail, the common thread to all of these is that the reports all came from Microsoft Defender. The staff personally tested the reported torrents, scanned the files with MS Defender and other products and then uploaded files that MS Defender identified to online multi-scanners such as VirusTotal.

The result was that all of the RAR files that MS Defender reported as security risks were found to be clean by everything else. This is not surprising as MS Defender's thread 'fingerprints' are unique and many agree Defender is the most likely to generate a false positive.

What this means to DCC members is -
Threats in compressed files are highly unusual
All files shared with and by other members are 'as-is' - DCC doesn't store torrent data, so what you're sharing is member-to-member and DCC has no way of 'scanning' torrent contents for threats
All files, especially executables such as games, should be treated carefully until you're confident that they're safe

So stay safe and keep seeding!

Read more in the forums »