Trade Me pics 'can't contain viruses'

Trade Me trust and safety manager Dean Winter has assured customers there is no way photographs of auction items on New Zealand's most-visited website can contain viruses, even if antivirus software identifies a threat.

A visitor to the website claimed that a photograph of a mountain bike being auctioned on Trade Me triggered a warning from his antivirus system, NOD32, which said it contained the Paylap trojan. The trojan is designed to trick Paypal users into disclosing their usernames and passwords so they can be defrauded.

Mr Winter said that after looking into the claim he was certain the warning was a "false positive".

Though Trade Me had not seen one, they were not uncommon because antivirus software is designed to "err on the side of caution", he says.

"There is no chance of there being any malicious code in any photographs that are on the site, because what you are viewing is not the photograph we are given. It is totally rewritten and then put back on to the site. On top of that we have very good intrusion detection software," Mr Winter says.

Trade Me users can ignore such warnings or contact the auction house to discuss them.