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Posted on 13 Aug 2008 at 11:20

The scale of this risk is impossible to estimate - we know the UK sees more than £400 million of fraudulent transactions a year, but there's simply no way to find out how the bogus credit card details are obtained. If you want to play it safe, avoid small sites that handle their own payment transactions, and stick to sites that use a specialist third party, such as NetBanx or SECPay, to process payments.

In a market of so many small sites, there's even a chance that site operators could be deliberately stealing credit card numbers or hosting malware themselves. "It's very difficult for anyone to tell the difference between a legitimate site and an illegitimate one," admits Andrew Lee.

"One such trick is setting up a website that looks like a video site, but when you click to play the video, a requester says you require a codec. People are familiar with the idea of needing plug-ins to watch videos, so they click 'yes I want the codec' - and then it installs malware."

We didn't come across this particular deception, but after discovering four compromised sites on the first two pages of Google results, we have to say that downloading music and videos is certainly a more risky business than you may realise. We'd hesitate to go surfing in these waters without a proper antivirus package.

Risk rating: MEDIUM
Not all music and video sites are what they seem. Use a security package to check out links before you click, and if you're in any doubt, err on the side of caution.

Is the virus threat real?

Author: Darien Graham-Smith