web virus from photos

[swordsman 192]

well I might sound like a dad or old man (i am 35 )  but i have been downloading/ right chick photos  and people email/posted thing to me  from 2003 on  myspace on other place(image search)  to 2019  and i have 10-100,000 of photos saved up over the years(most of it guns or gaming stuff) and  80% of it have have posted/saved  on facebook over the years. well with thing that have been going over  on facebook i want to saved some of it to a flash drive but i don't know were some of it came from (this is over 10 years worth of stuff some of it from when myspace 1st started). So, can you get a virus from downloading a picture online?  I don't want to take photos out of my facebook albums and save it if there could be a virus on it. 

[They call me Loyalty 1,958]

I've been doing the same thing with... eh... kitten pictures and... not pron. And there has never been any problem with it. I just right click and then select "save image as". Not a single virus has ever found its way into my pc. Unless my family is using it, in which case they manage to get the worst stuff. I don't know how they do it.

Also, I have the free version of Avast. The one with the weird-looking logo. Really, look it up. That sh*t looks weird. So, it is important to have an anti-virus, really. But it is more about the kind of sites you visit. Especially for those gun pictures. Still, I hope a more knowledgeable user can answer your question. So, if you pardon my ignorance.

[Splashee 28,602]

@swordsman Downloaded images from the web are completely safe from viruses. You don’t ever need to worry.

For technical reasons, I’ll explain why viruses can’t attach to images:
 

Computer viruses are computer programs, they need to be executed like a computer program, and there are only one way to do that: Running from within a program, that is, being a program. On a PC, that means it needs to be an EXE file or DLL type of file that is loaded into memory and executed by the computer CPU.

Images are purely data, but if it had executable code inside, there is no way that program code would ever get a chance to execute on your computer CPU. Especially images like JPEG which are constructed from their frequency domain, the way to get the images back through a Fast Fourier Transform, would just corrupt the virus code (render it harmless), and the inverse transformation would not keep the virus code the same (it would get corrupted from being executable in the first place).

Images are safe, but programs are not. Be very careful about downloading installers, computer drivers, and other things that look especially suspicious. And do never fall for stupid download links on Discord.

In conclusion, images from the web, downloaded using “save image” in your web browser, is completely safe!

[ZiggWheelsManning 15,533]

I knew it  Those suspicious computer drivers  

[Splashee 28,602]

5 hours ago, ZiggWheelsManning said:

I knew it  Those suspicious computer drivers  

It is suspicious internet sites with their downloads of "drivers".

About 10 years ago, search engines started picking up results of exactly what you needed, even when you misspelled the word, used only lower case letters, etc, and I feel like 90% of all driver downloads are still such fake results, where you download viruses instead.

Also, just using Windows 10 and the old Internet Explorer, searching for any IRL tutorial, and you will catch adware. It is very unsafe to use old browsers, especially when they are built into the OS... Why Microsoft, why?

[swordsman 192]

thanks. i use the  public library computer(they use chorme like my phone) most time to do stuff online but now i use my phone more.

[Splashee 28,602]

42 minutes ago, swordsman said:

thanks. i use the  public library computer(they use chorme like my phone) most time to do stuff online but now i use my phone more.

Also, Chrome is extremely safe. Of all the browsers, I think it is the safest. (I use Firefox though, an annoying browser).