0

A few days ago, there were a few files that may have been plagued by a virus that I asked my colleague to send me through a file sharing service (here, WeTransfer).

The files were sent correctly and were without any viruses.

However, part of me wondered if those services like WeTransfer or Dropbox have anti-virus natively incorporated into their services.

If anyone tried to send files that contain viruses, will these files be blocked?

Improve this question

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

Usually services like that don't have AV natively for the reason that it would cause extra delay in the transfer of the files. Especially with larger files that are going to take time to transfer anyways, anti-virus scans on these files are going to cause further delay which is going to reduce user experience. So files with viruses will not be blocked. Instead some of these services will block certain file extensions especially executable extensions but not all do this.

Hope this helps!

Also, a good service to use when wanting to check suspicious files is VirusTotal.com, this will run the file against a ton of different AV brands.

Improve this answer
2

Nowadays a lot of file sharing services have natively incorporated antivirus that check if the files that are uploaded are virus files.

For example, Google Drive scans for viruses files smaller than 25 MB. For larger files, a warning is displayed saying that the file can't be scanned.

Dropbox so far doesn't have embedded virus scanning.

One Drive doesn't have antivirus protection too.

I work for Maytech, secure data transfer and storage company, we offer a secure file sharing service Quatrix, it has incorporated antivirus and all uploads are scanned for malware on the server side.

Improve this answer
3
  • I appreciate your full disclosure. Out of curiosity, do you know that Dropbox and OneDrive don't have virus scanning, or just have no evidence to show they do?
    – MiaoHatola
    Commented Apr 18, 2017 at 8:52
  • 1
    Hi @MiaoHatola, what concerns Dropbox, here's official Dropbox help page dropbox.com/en/help/8406 It says the following: "Dropbox will sync any files added to it, so if someone syncs a virus or malware file, it will be synced to any computers linked to the account. Other users' accounts and computers may also be affected if the virus or malware is in a shared folder."
    – Anastasia
    Commented Apr 19, 2017 at 7:59
  • 1
    What concerns OneDrive, here's official help page: support.office.com/en-us/article/…. It says that virus scanning is available in SharePoint and in OneDrive for Business. But in usual OneDrive virus scanning is not available.
    – Anastasia
    Commented Apr 19, 2017 at 7:59

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .