*.jpg:zone identifyer??

joecrash · 20 May 2011

I'm not sure if this is the correct forum or not to post this question, but here goes anyway.

As Im watching my av run a scan, it continually shows what file it is looking at - (Norton 360). Ive seen several times a path that refers to a .jpg file, but on the end of that extension is another I dont remember ever seeing before :Zone Identifyer

I went to the file in question, and of course it was just a simple .jpg file, with nothing saying a word about it also being a zone identifyer.

What is this, and what does it do? Is this a symptom of a virus or spyware that has gone undetected?

A Guy · 21 May 2011

When Internet Explorer downloads a file, it adds the zone identifier to the end to identify what security zone the downloaded file came from. I believe some other MS programs may also add this. It's basically saying this was downloaded from the Restricted zone, or the Internet zone, etc. It's normally hidden data, and not something to be concerned about. A Guy

logicearth · 21 May 2011

NTFS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alternate data streams (ADS)

...

Very small ADS are also added within Internet Explorer (and now also other browsers) to mark files that have been downloaded from external sites: they may be unsafe to run locally and the local shell will require confirmation from the user before opening them.[17] When the user indicates that he no longer wants this confirmation dialog, this ADS is simply dropped from the MFT entry for downloaded files.