Unintended file downloaded. Am I likely to have gotten a virus?

Question

I clicked on a link that appeared to be perfectly legit. It proceeded to bring me to a suspicious website that downloaded a file to my PC automatically. I deleted the file quickly and never ran it. I can't exactly remember the file name, but it was something like "1...sco" (may have been a different file extension). How likely is it that I now have a virus on my PC? If so what so I do to fix the issue. As of now my PC seems to be functioning normally, but there could be something going on in the background that I am unaware of. Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

It' hard to say anything in security with 100% surety, but if you didn't run it or open it, then you should be good.

The reason I put the "100% sure" disclaimer is that, as this Kapersky article about drive by downloads says, it's possibly for a downloaded file to infect your PC without you clicking on it, for example if it's crafted to exploit your virus scanner when it is scanned, or to exploit the OS when it is indexed or when the OS tries to create a thumbnail preview of the file, etc. But I think these are rare and if you are good about doing your OS updates then you should be good.

Answer 2

In general if you download a virus, for example on an exe windows file, you need to executed the file. The majority of the browsers ask you what you want to do with the file, and some of them even warn you. If you didn't execute the file (double click in windows) is safe to delete it. Also if you have AV(Anti-virus) do a full scan of your system in case.

Hope it helps