Is the application/octet-stream MIME type safe for uploading?

Question

We have a server side PHP script to handle file uploads from an Android app. This script identifies the mime type of AMR files as application/octet-stream . We have an array containing some MIME types that script uses to check whether the file is safe or not. I'm not sure whether to add application/octet-stream to this array or not. Is it safe? Or do we have to check this type of file more thoroughly? If yes, how?

Answer 1

application/octet-stream just means "generic binary", so whether or not it is "safe" depends more on what you are doing with the file - just like every kind of data accepted from a user.

If you are just storing the file for Download later, it is safe.