[R] virus - free

[Prof Brian D Ripley]

On Wed, 16 Aug 2000, Peppy Adi Purnomo wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I am wanting to download the recent R update off the web.  May I assume
> confidently that R package from the website is virus free?  I apologise if
> this is a very silly question, I just need to convince myself if the site is
> very hygiene.

`R is free software and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY', including
against viruses.

People normally worry most about viruses on Windows, and 
http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/windows-NT/ReadMe says

  Note: CRAN does not have Windows systems and cannot check these
  binaries for viruses. Use the normal precautions with downloaded
  executables.

If you are worried about viruses, I suggest you compile R from source
yourself, or at least check the imported files with an up-to-date
virus checker.  I would *never* assume anything you download is
virus-free, even if the site owner assures you so, as how are you to know
that the site has not been tampered with, or another site is
masquerading as what you think is a CRAN site, or ....


-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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