Does downloading music illegally put viruses on your computer?

I have I-tunes. But I am considering downloading illegally? What should I do.

Does downloading music illegally put viruses on your computer?free adware remover

Generally real audio and movie files do not have viruses.

There is a distinction between 2 types of files - "data" and "executable content". The former only displays content while the later actually executes and carries out certain instructions.

Malware (viruses are a subset) can only come in the form of executable content (not just exe files but also scripts).

Because MP3 (image files like gif, jpg etc as well ) and most media files are none-executable content it is generally safe but there are two exceptions

1) Security vulnerability. This can cause a normally harmless file type to start executing shell code typically by buffer overflows.

E.g. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_zd...

Not very common but the importance of keeping your system update with patches cannot be stressed enough.

2) Audio files embed with executable content.Certain media players like Windows Media player allows the running of scripts embedded with media files!

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/wmpscrip... fixes the problem.

Of course, you have to be sure you are running a media file!

Watch out for double extensions e.g mysong.mp3.exe is not a mp3 file!