Safety of opening .txt files

text-files virus
John picture John · Oct 19, 2012 · Viewed 11.6k times · Source

If I'm given a URL that points to a .txt file, is it always safe to open it? Can it possibly contain virus or malicious content?

Answer

user1544165 picture user1544165 · Oct 19, 2012

A genuine txt-file can contain virus code but it cannot be executed, so it's totally safe. However, a file can use double file extension like this, so watch out:

a-virus-file.txt.exe

Windows hides by default .exe because it's a known file type.

Related questions

How do I save a String to a text file using Java?

In Java, I have text from a text field in a String variable called "text". How can I save the contents of the "text" variable to a file?

Read More
How to append text to an existing file in Java?

I need to append text repeatedly to an existing file in Java. How do I do that?

Read More
How can you find and replace text in a file using the Windows command-line environment?

I am writing a batch file script using Windows command-line environment and want to change each occurrence of some text in a file (ex. "FOO") with another (ex. "BAR"). What is the simplest way to do that? Any built in …

Read More