Can a URL harbor malware?

[Walter E.]

I use Win xp and ZoneAlarm Pro 4.

I received an e-mail from a friend and ZA promptly renamed it to .zlt and
quarantined it. The.zlt extension is used by ZA to replace the original .url
extension.

Is it possible for a file with a url extension to contain viruses or other
malware?

I always thought that html messages cannot harbor viruses. But, then, I
guess this was not an html file. What is a .url file?

Can someone enlighten me?

 

[Kippy]

A URL (Uniform resource locator) is simply a link to a
webpage.
Highly unlikely that the link itself contain malware but
possible that the page it links to does.
Kippy

 

[Mike P]

And yes HTML. pages can contain both malware and viruses