That’s why I always prefer an offline converter. Also if your upload a file somewhere the website can save it for their own purpose alhough they say they won’t do it.
FBI warnings are true—fake file converters do push malware
Submitted 1 week ago by RegularJoe@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
MemmingenFan923@feddit.org 1 week ago
horrorslice@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
The website mentions that there are fake offline converters that do it as well.
MemmingenFan923@feddit.org 1 week ago
Yes this can also happen. I should have written open source offline converter
Ulrich@feddit.org 1 week ago
Which offline converter? I find myself often trying to convert:
- PDF to JPEG
- AVC to MP4
- OPUS to MP3
etc. I have no idea how to do that but if I type it into a search engine there’s usually tools there.
T156@lemmy.world 1 week ago
FFmpeg and handbrake do the latter two quite handily. The latter even has a nice program interface, rather than needing commands.
ImageMagick is capable of the first. I’ve had it go the other way before, and I should be most surprised if it couldn’t convert a PDF to a jpg.
kava@lemmy.world 1 week ago
imagemagick handles almost all image files
images ) ls 001.jpg 002.jpg 003.jpg 004.jpg 005.jpg images ) convert 001.jpg example.pdf
ffmpeg handles almost all video files
ex ) ls rock.mp4 ex ) ffmpeg -i rock.mp4 rock.avi
if you use gnome there’s a nice little feature of the file explorer where you can just drag and drop scripts into
~/.local/share/nautilus/scripts/for example
make a fish script (ignoring error checking for brevity here, my real script had a couple guard rails)
#!/usr/bin/env fish set file $argv[1] convert $file (basename $file .png).pdf
then when you right click on a file in your gnome file explorer you can click the scripts option
and the script is right there so you can just easily convert with the press of a button
note, i crossed out some stuff that includes client names
tldr: there are so many ways to do what you need to do there’s no reason to trust random websites you don’t know. there’s a lot of slimey people out there wanting to take advantage of people. and everybody should strive to be at least a little computer literate. the examples i gave here aren’t complicated. they’re simple commands
vithigar@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
PDF to JPEG
Don’t most pdf viewers have an export to image option?
AVC to MP4
Do you actually have files with an .avc extension? AVC is a codec that can be used in many different container formats, including MP4. Where did these files come from?
OPUS to MP3
I actually agree that most audio conversion tools are needlessly awkward. Audacity will convert these just fine, though doesn’t really do bulk conversion. Foobar2000 will do it in bulk if you’re on windows.
MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
Video and audio conversion can be done with Handbrake or Shutter Encoder, both are nice GUIs
ploot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
Foobar2000 is good with audio file conversions, once you have installed the relevant codecs.
kipo@lemm.ee 1 week ago
You could try Permute. It’s a pretty simple app for converting video and audio. Permute is my go-to for quick video conversion.
DBPowerAmp has an easy-to-use audio converter that supports pretty much every audio format and does batch file conversion as well. DBPowerAmp is my go-to for audio conversion.
Both of these are paid apps.
zerofk@lemm.ee 1 week ago
I can’t comment on the others, but PDF to JPEG should be easy enough. ImageMagick, which another commenter suggested, is possible but not user friendly. However you can just open the PDF in many applications and export it as an image. Adobe Acrobat and Photoshop can do it. GIMP probably too.
I’m a last ditch effort you can even just open the file and screenshot it.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I tend to just whip up a script of some sort that employs widely used libraries for the conversion. I know that’s more technical than most people would have the tolerance or aptitude for, but for me, it’s the least ambiguous and most secure way to do stuff like that. And then I can squirrel it away in a utility scripts directory and use it later if I need it again.
djmikeale@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Protip: ask your favourite llm to write you a python script to convert between the formats you’re interested in. Bonus benefit: simultaneously learn a bit about programming!
AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 1 week ago
As much as I’m not a fan of this, I’ll at least admit it was helpful in helping me quickly learn how to scale videos using FFMPEG. That, combined with the documentation and now I have a command saved to a reference text document to help if I ever forget.
olympicyes@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I have zero interest in learning all the intricacies of ffmpeg so I find ChatGPT to be very useful. I’ve also used it for yt-dlp for downloading videos and converting the audio to mp3. Very useful. I personally save them as bash scripts so I can just input the file name or url as a command line argument. On Mac you can also wrap your bash scripts in AppleScript if you want to make applets for these functions. ChatGPT works great for apple script as well but I’ve had to feed it source code (eg from Apple Digital Mastering applets) to ensure it writes the new code correctly. You still must know what you’re doing.
prayer@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Ffmprg is remarkably powerful. If it is a picture on your screen, you can use ffmpeg to do what you want to it. Recently discovered it could convert PNG, jpeg, and webp images back and forth. To think I’ve only used it for video.
variouslegumes@reddthat.com 6 days ago
I’d recommend some CLI utility to a beginner over Python: pandoc, ffmpeg, image magic…
djmikeale@lemm.ee 5 days ago
True, that’s a good point :)
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
“Users who in the past would type ‘free online file converter’ into a search engine are vulnerable, as the algorithms used for results now often include paid results, which might be scams.”
Mm hmm.
aaron@lemm.ee 1 week ago
I refuse to believe that the free service I’ve been using for years has been exploiting my behavior for money… what kind of world is this?? What kind of psychopathic organization would do such a thing? Why isn’t capitalism working for me? Why?
Evotech@lemmy.world 1 week ago
The best is online CSR generators.
Yes, I know people who have implemented private keys they have been given from random websites.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
I’m… Wut… Just…
WHAT THE FUCK?
enumerator4829@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
What? Just base64 encrypt it before you store it in the git hub
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 6 days ago
That’s why I only use totallylegitfileconverter.ru they even have a lottery where they can directly transfer the money to your bank account when you win. They’re very friendly!
peteyestee@feddit.org 1 week ago
No way, lol
echodot@feddit.uk 3 days ago
I feel like most of the FBI warnings these days are “by the way the stove is hot don’t touch it”.
They said something very similar about free VPN services
doctortofu@reddthat.com 1 week ago
“Users who in the past would type ‘free online file converter’ into a search engine are vulnerable, as the algorithms used for results now often include paid results, which might be scams.”
Nooo, you mean turning search engines into monetization and ad delivery engines had downsides? Who would have thought!
Fucking greed at the root of another goddamned issue…