Memory Stick

[Maydup]

I’ve been given a memory stick with a bunch of documents stored on it. I’m not in the habit of putting random memory sticks into my personal laptop. I don’t where it’s been!

What can I do to prevent catching a virus?

[naomi24]

Don’t you trust the person who gave it to you?

[Buenchico]

Nothing nasty is going to happen simply because you plug it it. If you're really worried, as soon as you've plugged it in, right-click on its icon and look for an option to scan it with your security software.

Personally, I wouldn't bother though. As long as you only open files with familiar file extensions (such as .txt, .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .odt, etc) nothing nasty's going to happen. Even if you were to accidentally try to open, say, a dodgy .exe file, Windows wouldn't let you proceed without asking you first if you were happy to do so.

At one time there may have been a real risk from using USB sticks when you "don't know where they've been". These days there simply isn't. (That's why internet cafés, public libraries, etc are all perfectly happy nowadays for people to use their own USB sticks with their PCs).

[Maydup]

I’m clearly out of date. What’s changed to make it all so much cleaner?

[Buenchico]

Unless you've been mucking about with the settings on your laptop, it won't have 'auto-run' enabled on USB ports (as might have been common in the past). So the files on the drive can't do anything at all until you activate them by double-clicking on them. As long as you avoid double-clicking on files ending in .exe, .msi, etc and stick to regular document, spreadsheet and image formats (etc), you should be perfectly safe.

[Old_Geezer]

a) Don't boot from it.
b) Connect it to a PC that you won't worry about infections.
c) Let an AV check it out before opening any files.

[Maydup]

I won’t boot from it and will run a check in it before I open anything as I only have the one laptop.