Does anyone here think watching videos at metacafe.com is a potential virus/spyware risk? It took me a long while to realize that YouTube is generally safe... but having gotten a virus through a video (buffer overrun) on a video website probably 6 years ago.. since then I have been very hesitant to watch videos on these video sites.
Anyone here watch videos on metacafe?
Is metacafe safe?
Moderator: General Moderators
- seodevhead
- Forum Regular
- Posts: 705
- Joined: Sat Oct 08, 2005 8:18 pm
- Location: Windermere, FL
- The Phoenix
- Forum Contributor
- Posts: 294
- Joined: Fri Oct 06, 2006 8:12 pm
Anything you access online can be a risk. Thats why you:
- Run an antivirus with regular updates
- Regularly run spyware cleanup utilities
- Run as a non-priveledged user
- Keep your firewall up to date
- Keep a recent ghost/dd/clone image of your system so you can instantly restore if you need to
All of those help reduce your risks. You can also run a non-Windows OS. Mac OS is extremely under targetted for viruses, and most Linux/BSD distro's are so well built that you are extremely unlikely to get a virus that way.
I do visit Metacafe, and Youtube. There is a risk, but its less substantial since it has to break through the protections in Flash and your browser.
All in all, definitely not a "top-ten" risk by any means.
- Run an antivirus with regular updates
- Regularly run spyware cleanup utilities
- Run as a non-priveledged user
- Keep your firewall up to date
- Keep a recent ghost/dd/clone image of your system so you can instantly restore if you need to
All of those help reduce your risks. You can also run a non-Windows OS. Mac OS is extremely under targetted for viruses, and most Linux/BSD distro's are so well built that you are extremely unlikely to get a virus that way.
I do visit Metacafe, and Youtube. There is a risk, but its less substantial since it has to break through the protections in Flash and your browser.
All in all, definitely not a "top-ten" risk by any means.
As far as I'm aware, there is no buffer issue with Flash player, which both Youtube and Metacafe use to stream their videos. And if anything, you'd think it would break the buffer on the server and not your browser since the video is being decoded on the server.
Sites that stream movies without a wrapper (no flash wrapper) definitely run a higher risk of viruses than do video sites, but I think a lot of those issues have been taken care of recently with the whole buffer issue.
Sites that stream movies without a wrapper (no flash wrapper) definitely run a higher risk of viruses than do video sites, but I think a lot of those issues have been taken care of recently with the whole buffer issue.
- seodevhead
- Forum Regular
- Posts: 705
- Joined: Sat Oct 08, 2005 8:18 pm
- Location: Windermere, FL
- superdezign
- DevNet Master
- Posts: 4135
- Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 11:06 pm