Looking for free movies? Better check that link

If the Fifa world cup told us that watching the matches could lead to Malware, than so can searching for watching something for free.

While checking the link is good, hovering the mouse over the link doesn’t work for us who can’t see the screen. While doing some research in to this, I’ve found that hitting insert+f1 using Jaws pops up the link if your cursor is on the link using the browse mode function.

Unfortunately, this does not work in NVDA. I’ll have to do some research in to this and can post an update or even talk about it in a different podcast. I’ll also get some instructions for the Mac on a future call with Mac folks.

You can also use our favorite tool, Virus Total to see if that link has been reported to be malicious.

• You need to copy the link, and to do that, either press insert+f1 when on the link, or select the copy link as or copy link location depending on the browser.
• Go to Virus Total and select URL from the buttons and paste the link.
• Look at the results and determine what its telling you.

The higher the number of apps that detect the link as bad, the more likely it can be. Just because it may say 2 90, means 2 venders found a problem. I’d proceed with caution.

We talked about virus total and demoed it as part of last year’s TSB series, search the blog for the podcast.

The article that braught this discussion up is titled Looking for something to watch? This mistake puts your computer at risk and it may not just be your computer if you use another device.

Be safe, be well, and make sure you check this out. You will be happy you did.