Hello there,
As a student, I need to download various pdf files from social media. But will this pdf files be harmful for my macboook? I'm confused. Kindly suggest me what to do.
Thank you.
MacBook Pro with Touch Bar
Well, here is a different opinion:
Personally, i would not download anything at all from any social media site (or any site that is not the developer's site or the app store). There is no "precaution" except you, the person deciding to download or not. Proceed at your own risk.
R7i8a6l wrote:
Hello there,
As a student, I need to download various pdf files from social media. But will this pdf files be harmful for my macboook? I'm confused. Kindly suggest me what to do.
Thank you.
pdf files from social media ?
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Hello there,
Thanks for your suggestion. In most of the cases, my friends send PDFs from their android phone to me via social media. No idea where they download those from. What caution can be taken? Kindly lemme know.
Thank you.
I've dowloaded some pdfs on my iPad. They send me attachment and I can directly download them. While downloading nothing came up though. So what do you say?
If I open files like PDFs, videos or google docs from google drive , not download, will it be harmful for Mac?
Hi, welcome to the Apple Users Community.
Are the files from a trusted source? If they are from a random place you have no regular connection with, I suggest caution.
PDFs can be abused and cause problems but as long as you know that the files are legitimate, then you should be ok.
Best of luck
Well, they are putting their own devices at risk by doing that. Are they attaching the files or sending a link to the PDF for download? An attached file would go through the systems of the social media site and get flagged if any concerns are detected. Do you see a preview of the file in the social media app?
A link however is more difficult to detect issues, this would be directly downloaded to your device and while unlikely to cause harm, it is possible.
Is there some reason these have to be shared via social media and not a more trusted share-space?
Other options would be:
1. Disable JavaScript on your PDF reader.
2. Don't allow your PDF reader to execute Non-PDF files using external application.
3. Keep Macros disabled. Malicious files may try persuade you to enable but you shouldn't unless necessary.
I would not worry too much, just don't be reckless and you should be fine. The fact that you are asking for help here and showing caution tells me that you are not the reckless type.
Best of luck
Should I download PDFs from social media on MacBook?
