Want To Scan A File Before Downloading It. Is That Possible And How?

Gumby1406

Twenty-five page PDF on LinkedIn that I'd like to download. Want to scan it with Bitdefender Total Security Build 27.0.3.19 on my Windows 10 pc BEFORE downloading. Is that possible? How?

If not possible, what is best way to ensure I don't infect my pc with anything on this file download?

Appreciate any help.

Scott

Hi @Gumby1406

No, not that I'm aware of. If that file has a download link, you could submit it to Virus Total.

Otherwise, you could download it straight to a USB drive and do a contextual scan from there. And if you wanted to, submit that downloaded PDF to VirusTotal.

Kind regards,

Scott

Flexx

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/322215#Comment_322215

To add a quick note here, if a link is not detected as malicious that does not means that the file that it will download will not be malicious. There is no harm in downloading the file since downloading the file will not make your PC malicious, downloading and then executing the file might make your PC malicious.

So, my take here would be that if the link is leading to downloading of a particular file which you suspect can be malicious, there is no harm in downloading the file, but once you download the file, do not double click or execute it and upload the file directly on virustotal.com to check if the specific file is detected as malicious by any antimalware vendor.

Regrads

Gumby1406

Hi Scott,

Thanks for your quick and helpful response. I wasn't aware of Virus Total. Submitted the file link to Virus Total and got back "No security vendors flagged this URL as malicious". Based on this, I'm assuming that the file is ok to download.

Thank you!

Scott

You're welcome @Gumby1406, it was gladly done :)

Scott