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Downloading software is becoming more and more popular. There are many reasons for that blooming of software downloading with the Internet and fast broadband connections being the most important ones. But with the freedom of download comes a price. Software used to be something you would get on floppy disks. You would insert them into your computer drive and installs the software on them. Later on software came on CDs and DVDs that allowed software to become much bigger and richer. With the Internet becoming more and more popular and with very fast broadband Internet pipes being in almost every home the option of downloading large software directly from a server on the Internet instead of getting it on diskettes or CDs or DVDs became a reality. So software became much easier to get. In addition to the ability to download software instantly from the Internet instead of using tangible media the open source movement also pushed more and more high quality free software that users could download and install without paying anything to anyone. Although it might sounds like a perfect world of free instant software availability the option to get any software from anywhere instantly also opened the door for many risks that downloaders of software face. In the old days viruses were something that you got by installing infected software. Since software was delivered on tangible media the number of possible viruses was limited. The tangible media had to be infected at some point and then copied to another tangible media. Also significant time could pass between the virus infecting the software to the software being massively distributed. With the Internet the rules of the game of spreading viruses online completely changed. Software is distributed much faster as there is no tangible media that needs to be created and delivered. Viruses can be attached to software instantly and the same software can actually carry many different kinds of software on each of its copies. Moreover the large number of software available on the Internet for free created a reputation problem. If you go to a search engine and search for example for a dictionary software you might get hundreds or more of web sites that offer different software titles. How can you tell which one is safe to download and which one is not? The other problem with the Internet is that viruses now can be much smarter. On a computer that is not connected to the world like in the old days viruses were mostly about just doing harm and damaging the computer and the software on it. But with computers connected to the Internet viruses can now communicate with each other or with a server in order to copy data from the infected computer or to coordinate their attach. Some companies are trying to ease the pain by monitoring many online software titles and letting users know before they download the software if it is safe or not. Another effort is through digital signatures that guarantee that the software you downloaded is indeed genuine and from the maker it claims it is from. There is no way to be a hundred percent sure the software you download is safe. When downloading try to read reviews and make sure the website you download from is well known and has a good reputation of being safe.
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