Do you run your nzb downloads thru an antivirus

[Trythepie]

Do you run your nzb downloads thru an antivirus like Windows Defender or a program like Malwarebytes?
I've been using WD for years and it has never uncovered any corrupted files ever. So can it even uncover anything embedded?

Are any of these videos on usenet seeded with anything bad?

Is there a real need to run this type of security?

I recall vaguely years back of some popular torrent video when played that was phoning home to a dmca site --but not remembering details.
Not sure if I'm remembering it correctly at all.

Wouldn't a video get reported by the community if it was indeed infected?

[anon]

Unless the alleged video has an executable extension, the worst thing that can happen is that your "movie" is a fake error message claiming you don't have the required codec installed and helpfully suggesting a URL to download it from. Needless to say, you should not.

For warez, games and cracks where the content is expected to be executable, the situation is a bit more complex. In principle, you'll be fine as long as you get them from an established source, since any infected uploads (which are unlikely to begin with) will quickly get reported and whoever made them banned. Nonetheless, if you want extra assurance, a behavioral analysis service like ANY.RUN or Joe Sandbox is better for spotting malicious behavior than scanning with a traditional antivirus. Now, if you're using a public indexer like BinSearch or NZBKing... just assume everything is malware until proven otherwise.

[whodunnit]

I've never heard of a case of infection coming from an audio/video file (mp3, mp4, mkv), but yes I still manually scan everything just in case.