ITunes major cause of virus infections?

At my company, the "Corporate Compliance Officer" made this statement,
"First and foremost, download sites such as iTunes are one of the major causes of virus infections."
This got me thinking: Is he right or is he just blowing smoke? Has anyone compiled a statistic on this? I would love to disprove this statement. Therefore, does anyone have any ammunition for me to use because iTunes URL is now being blocked due to this reasoning?
Thanks for your help.
PowerMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Complete rot. The iTunes Music Store has never been shown to be a source of any type of virus or other infection (a few video iPods recently have shipped with a Windows worm copied on them - sloppy security precautions by the manufacturing plant, clearly- but that's a different issue). In fact, I'd rate is as just about impossible, since all the tracks and videos on the iTunes Music Store are in a copy-protected format that would be very difficult to infect with any sort of virus payload.
I think your "compliance officer" is thinking of peer-to-peer sites such as Limewire and is either mistakenly lumping the iTunes Music Store in with them or is just badly misinformed.

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I lost all of my Itunes music because of an infection that required them to wipe my computer. I am trying to get the music back from multiple sources. What I have recovered is a mess. Albums are mixed or songs not grouped as album. Help?

My computer got infected with some terrible virus. I contacted the manufacturer and they said the only thing to do was wipe the whole thing. I could not back it up bec this mess?ause it would include the infection. I have been trying to recover the lost music from several different places. A friend tried to help me by putting all of his music on my computer from his external hard drive. That was very nice of him but now it is a terrible mess. The recovered songs are not grouped into albums correctly. Some albums are mixed - every other song is from the other album. Some songs are listed separately and not grouped as an album. I tried to ask iTunes to find album art work and it has been running that for over 48 hours. Is that possible? When I try to stop it I get a message that says I will lose all the data. I admit that I am not very tech. savvy and I really don't know what I am doing. It took me more than 20 years to make that collection and I am heart broken. Do you have any ideas about how I start to fix

Unfortunately you've discovered too late how important it is to maintain an up-to-date backup of your iTunes library (and all other data of value). You could, before wiping the drive, have considered making use of a commercial data recovery service that could (albeit at considerable cost) have extracted your library from the hard disk, even if virus infected.
In the absence of that option, you will need to restore the content of your library from its original sources:
Depending on your location, you may be able to re-download any iTunes Store purchases that are still available on the Store
Likewise, most digital purchases from Amazon (including auto-rip copies of purchased CDs) should be available from the Amazon Cloud and via the Amazon Music application - the same may be true of other commercial sources for digital downloads
Content imported from your CDs will have to imported again
The specific situation that you describe regarding the music imported from your friend's external HDD suggests that either the source is badly organized and/or originates from a source other than iTunes (other media players may use alternative tags for information like artist, title, album, etc. that are not wholly consistent with how iTunes handle these). Without details of the issues you're seeing it is difficult to suggest a remedy other than going through the media album-by-album, track-by-track, and correcting the inconsistencies.
In the absence of a backup or access to the original library data there is no option other than painstakingly recreating your library as described above. As you do so, you'll now realize how important creating and maintaining backups are - in my case I have at all times three separate duplicates of my library, in two different locations, where none is ever more than a week old compared to the content of my master library.

ITunes is causing entire computer to freeze.....

iTunes is causing my entire computer to freeze since my last upgrade. If I'm using the application or its up and I'm not using it, after a while, it will cause the entire computer to freeze and I have to do an emergency shutdown because my mouse won't even move. Everything is locked up @ this point. Having the iPod plug in without the application up doesn't really seem to bother from what I've seen it but there were occasions when the iPod was plugged in and the application was in use that the computer made this skitzing sound and then completely locked up. I got the blue screen on approx. 2 occasions. And when I plug my iPod up to some speakers in the same manner you plug up headphones (Sony brand), I got that same skitzing sound while listening to one of the songs, but it didn't stop playing.
It has froze/shutdown while using the application alone while I'm browsing the store for different items. This is the majority of the times it has happen.
It has froze/shutdown while the iPod was plugged in.
It has froze/shutdown while the application has been open on the computer but not in use. And this is the only common factor going on in relation to the shutdowns.
I use the same thing basically everytime I come on this computer. Always FireFox, MSN, Gmail Talk, & Yahoo Messenger running in the background. <--- This hasn't caused a problem before. And that's about it. I've had the computer to slow down due to low memory but not the skitzing sounds and frequency of shutdowns its experiencing now.
Can anybody relate to this and if so, then what should I do? Is there a problem with the last release? And at this point, what should I do about this?

i had a similar problem recently. what happened to me was that itunes was doing some kinda "reeding" of music files of some sort [i honestly dont remember the exact name of the action], but whenever it got to a certain song, it would do the same thing you are describing which is crash the computer or freeze it up. i decided to actually FIND the file that was causing the problem and when i got rig of the file and started itunes [this after having to turn itunes on and watch my computer freeze up again to acquire the song name] it worked perfectly.
it seems to me that [since the file itself was a rip of a rip] it might have been corrupted some how and so itunes didnt know what to do with it. i looked at the file and an mp3 file that should be in the range of 2-5mb was actually in the range of 1-200kb which leads me to believe that the file was corrupted.
i dont know if that will help, but i hope you get your problem resolved...

Unable to sync apps after a fatal crash from a virus infected email

Recently I had a crash resulting from a virus infected email. Upon reinstating my operating system (XP Pro) and lost software, I am having difficulties in syncing my Iphone with my PC, my Library apps is blank but the apps are still showing on the iphone. I'm also having problems with my account which is stated to be different from the one on the PC, possibly because I reinstalled itunes. Any suggestions as to how I reinstate my apps in the Library and have the account recognized. Any help would be most appreciated.

Dfu means device firmware upgrade
Press and hold Power + Home buttons together (10sec)
Phone will go blank
Before Apple logo comes, release the Power n keep holding Home button
Until you see a pop in the PC that Apple device in recovery mode
At that point iTunes will pop asking to restore iphone
Click restore or
before u click restore just download the iOS 6.0.2 on say desktop
After that press and hold shift on ur keyboard then click restore
It will allow u to navigate and select the iOS firmware u just downloaded
That's it. When done, restore from your iphone backup, and syncing starts working

Why does iTunes Match cause iTunes to crash ?

Why does iTunes Match cause iTunes to crash ?

My problem is similar. It began right after I allowed an Adobe update to run. (Adobe Flash Player version 10.0.45.2 is recorded in my Registry.) Now every single website I try to open triggers a window (see below) and repeats many times.
It makes no difference whether I "Allow" or not. I think it runs this window for every flash object on that website. It is occurring while I enter this post!
It makes using the Internet MOST challenging. Surely this is causing major problems for everyone.
I have IE8 on Windows Vista.
Here's the text from the message:
"A website wants to open web content using this program on your computer.
This program will open outside of Protected Mode. Internet Explorer's Protected Mode helps protect your computer. If you do not trust this website, do not open this program.
Name: Adobe Flash Player
Publisher: Adobe Systems Incorporated
(Checkbox) Do not show me the warning for this program again.
buttons: Allow Do Not Allow"
Should I appeal to Microsoft or Adobe for a solution? Is is possible to install the previous version?
Thanks for any wisdom.

Moved Library between PC's and now Itunes is causing the Pc to shut down.

Hi Guys,
sorry this is going to be such a long post but I typed all this out for an apple tech e.mail and they have referred me here. I don't want to type it all again so I've cut it from my original message. In addition to the info below to be clear, I have un-installed and re-installed a couple of times to try and resolve the issue but it's not worked. The machine seems rock solid playingDVD's and the same media files in windows media player.
I can only think it has something to do with the way in which I have transferred my library (Unless it is a hardware fault but It seems stable doing everything else!) I've also deleted all the previous iTunes librarys that came when I ported my files across to the new machine. I'm lost, hope you can help. I think the key is in the event log error messages but I'm not tech enough to understand what I'm being told. Sorry.
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
original post to Apple:
Store Customer Support
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/ww
Customer First Name : david
Customer Last Name :
email : [email protected]
Web Order # :
Support Subject : Download
Sub Issue : Other
iTunes Account Name: xxxxxxx
Platform : Windows XPSP2
Error Code :
Other Error :
Comments:
I have just transferred my iTunes library from one pc to a new one which will be used as our house media PC. I did this via a network switch.
After downloading iTunes and insytalling i have added my library by "File/Add folder to library" and selected iTunes music folder.
iTunes store works ok but if I try and browse my music collection after 3 or 4 mouse clicks in iTunes library mode the software switches my PC off. The machine is stable under all other applications, it is only in the library that this problem occurs. The shutdown has no warning, it's much like the plug has been pulled.
i have checked the event log and the following messages are present after every crash. Oddly, windows does not detect the crash and the PC re-starts without any blue screens, warnings or prompting for safe mode.
This:
Source iPod Service Event ID 0
The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( iPod Service ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: Service started.
is followed imediatly by:
Source: SecurityCentre Event ID 1800
The Windows Security Center Service has started.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Following the link takes me to the Microsoft Knowledge base but it yields nothing.
iTunes and this library is still functioning on the original PC without a hitch. The library does include 5 albums I bought and downloaded from iTunes, I tried authorising the PC incase it was related but it still crashes.
I assume it must be something to do with the library transfer or the way i have done it. i have not yet mated my ipod with the new machine, is this relevant?
Two other errors relating to iTunes show up in the event log which I will paste below however, iTunes has cause the PC to crash bothe before, and after these events.
This:
Source MsiInstaller Event ID 1004
Detection of product '{4F5CE18C-D97D-48FF-A510-A0D90C918294}', feature 'iTunes', component '{2A7E5403-A5F5-4D02-AE05-7E93F2F0B9F4}' failed. The resource 'HKEYCURRENTUSERSoftwareMicrosoftOfficeOutlookAddinsiTunesAddIn.CalendarHelper' does not exist.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
was followed by:
Source MsiInstaller Event ID 1001
Detection of product '{4F5CE18C-D97D-48FF-A510-A0D90C918294}', feature 'iTunes' failed during request for component '{E8A1D3E2-F5D3-4B24-AB93-52F7E602A235}'
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
again following the links has yielded nothing.
Can you advise or help on my current problem? thanks
David
Message was edited by: Host

Honestly, all the people in all the world that look at this forum, no-one can tell me why my itunes is causing my machine to fall over?
I wiped the machine and started again. Fresh XP install, fresh iTune download, fired it up imported one album and bang. Over it went. I've PC Checked the hard ware, mad onioned the system to see if it's a resource thing but it's rock solid until i open iTunes. Then after every re-boot, the message is back in the event log.
This:
Source iPod Service Event ID 0
The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( iPod Service ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: Service started.
Can someone at least reply to let me know I've not typed this in dutch!! :o)
Cheers
David

Cleaning virus-infected files on external hard drive used for Time Machine

I am kinda reposting this with some extra explanation since I didn't really get any good respnses on my first post:
I am running McAfee VirusScan and it locates and cleans virus infected files just fine on my computer, but when it finds infected files on the external hard drive I use for Time Machine backups, it says "Repair Failed". Is there a way to clean infected files on my Time Machine backup drive?
I had found a virus in several documents on my Mac, which I cleaned, but it seemed to infect a bunch of the files located in Time Machine as well. I know these files shouldn't harm my Mac, but I still don't like having virus infected files. They seem to propagate and I don't want to give them to any of my Windows-using friends.

Hi,
Usually (but not always), virus-infected files aren't system-related, so if they cannot be repaired, there should be an option in VirusScan to delete them or quarantine them instead of repairing them. Assuming that you are archiving Mac-related files and not archives of Windows files, then it should certainly be safe to just have VirusScan delete or quarantine them. An alternative is that you could delete them manually. But before you do any of this, be sure to take a look at the filename and its location in the folder hierarchy to make sure that you aren't removing a file that's critical to the operation of some piece of software.
Hope this helps,
Ken

ITunes crashing caused by differen versions in Library/Receipts..??

I am also encountering FREQUENT crashes of iTunes while using different functions....
In response to one of the people posting a message I noticed that I have 2 different versions of iTunes in my Library/Receipts folder-an old iTunes.pkg version 4.8 and the newest iTunesX.pkg version 7.0.1...
Could this be the problem causing the crashing, or, as I have read many messages, does it exist from the new version ?

These are the system requirements of iWOW:
Mac OS X 10.2 or later
OS X 10.2 and iTunes 6 or better
Will not run on specific combination of iTunes 7 with OS X 10.3.9
Will not run as intended on OS X 10.4.8
Because of the last line, I haven't installed and tried it.
I've read and replied to some posts of people who had difficulties after the evaluation period of iWOW expired and wanted to get rid of it.
Did you use the accompanied Uninstall application to get rid of it?
It may otherwise have left pieces that interfere with iTunes and cause it to crash.
That 'Uninstall' app. is a run-only script, so I can't look into it to see what it exactly does.
If you didn't run that Uninstall app., it might be a good idea to run it now.
I don't expect re-installing iTunes to solve the problem, but you never know.
Remove the 'iTunesX.pkg' file before doing that and also trash the iTunes application, so the Installer will install a complete 'fresh' app. and not just update components.
Re-installing iTunes will not affect your library or library files.
If you still experience crashes, click 'Report' and save the report. I'm not good in reading crash reports, but it contains information about the thread that crashed and the components involved. Someone might be able to detect the culprit.
As a last resort, perform an 'Archive and Install' of OS X. This will install a complete fresh system folder, but retain most of your personal settings.
I's a good idea to have a backup of at least your Home folder before doing that.
M
17' iMac 800 MHz, 768 MB RAM, 200 GB HD, DL burner Mac OS X (10.4.8) iTunes 7.0.1

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I am running McAfee VirusScan and it locates and cleans virus infected files just fine on my computer, but when it finds infected files on my Time Machine backup drive it says "Repair Failed". Is there a way to clean infected files on my Time Machine backup drive?
Related question: Is this because the actual files are saved in a central hidden location and the files I see when I open the backup disk with finder are actually just alias links?

Schmactor,
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Even if you have downloaded an email, it is even less likely that you're going to send it to a Windows-using friend. Since any Windows virus is going to do absolutely nothing on your Mac, you most likely will just delete it. Are you in the habit of forwarding random emails that have unidentifiable attachments to your friends?
Keep in mind that it is always in the best interest of the developers of anti-virus software titles that the software constantly "finds" things, even when nothing exists. If you were to purchase anti-virus software, only to find that it does absolutely nothing for months at a time, you will not pay for further updates. I have been using a Mac for many, many years, and I have never run any kind of anti-virus software. I have also never sent a virus to someone else.
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please could somebody help.i think my iphone4 has malware or a virus and would really appreciate suggestions on how to remove.wy safari browser is frozen and thought about a system backup to itunes and restoring factory settings.worried this would also infect my computer?
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If your iPhone is jailbroken then it doesn't have a virus.
Your problem is most likely something else and the chances of your computer catch it are nonexsistant.
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Does downloading iTunes cause any viruses on my computer

^

iTunes comes from Apple, so always that you download it from the Apple site, you can be sure it won't come with viruses and it won't cause any problem.
However, be careful with the data you add to iTunes. If you download it from illegal sites, you may get viruses in your Mac, but they aren't an iTunes fault

ITunes major cause of virus infections?

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