Many people will say YAY to free software applications and programs found around the internet, but rarely takes into consideration the potential harms this may cause in the future. Fact of the matter is, developing a software application takes a considerable amount of time and obviously the developers want some kind of compensation for their efforts, usually in the form of money, either from you or a third party organization they serve as affiliates for.
These are the 3 most common ways freeware developers receives money for their efforts.
Sending information to third party organizations.
Once the application has been installed it can start to gather information about you and your computer and send this information to people who are interested in this and are willing to pay for it. This is usually sending system information to survey sites who want to know more about consumers, not all that harmful and the user rarely notices or finds out, but privacy infringement none the less, and they could easily begin to gather additional personal information.
Installing Third Party Software
This is by far the most annoying in the event that you get the wrong program installed. Many people have probably installed some free software and suddenly see a new toolbar, or some kind of antivirus application that was never there before. There are several downsides to having them installed, aside from being installed without your consent or knowledge is that they will often change system settings to make removal difficult or remind you to buy them if you have received some kind of trial version, another thing is that they will rarely come with an uninstall file and thus can be very hard to remove.
Here’s why they bundle third party applications:
- A toolbar will change your default search engine, you will search in that engine and they will display ads, just like Google will, but the toolbar developer will get paid when you click on ads in their search engine, so in turn they will be interested to pay free software developers to bundle their toolbar to their free software.
- Trial programs are very common as well, the reason is probably obvious: if a user buys the program, the freeware developer gets a commission. The most common ones are malware protection and removal programs, bear in mind these types of malware protection applications may very well be malware in disguise, fishing for credit card information.
Malicious Code and Applications
This by far the most dangerous situation a computer user can exposed to. There are many types of malicious applications out there, Trojans, spyware, malware, the list goes on, but they mostly serve the same functions: To harm your computer using destructive code, use your computer to attack other sites (DDOS – Denial of Service), send spam mail, or the worst one, get a hold of your personal information to execute an identity theft, your credit card information and ultimately, your money.
Here you can read about the different kinds of malware.
Stay safe, Always have anti-spyware installed on your computer.
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