Just a caution, or, how I got snagged.

This site that of COURSE hits the top of the search engines–freeze.com (don’t go there) —managed to offer a legitimate download of a useful program, Filezilla, but AS the legit program downloads, about the time your normal little black and white ‘Accept these conditions’ screen pops up—viola! you get a popup made to look exactly like that familiar screen that says Accept and once you do, then starts wildly downloading everything but the kitchen sink. I was tired, I was rushed: at the last instant something didn’t ‘feel’ right about a sudden new start of downloads and I aborted it quick as I could hit the button, but not before I had 3 of the blighters AND the Yahoo toolbar. Going into ‘add/remove programs’ showed NADA, nothing.

That’s how they get past the watchdog programs — you’ve ‘Allowed’ it.

Once on, they mask themselves so that they don’t show as what they are in ‘add/remove programs’ and don’t show in Firefox’s ‘add-on manager’ —so you have to go another route: look for things that just installed and nuke them forthwith. It’s still a pita to do and you risk blowing off something essential by mistake. The date-installed is the best guide.

Hot spot in Hell, for sure, and I and most other computer people would take a stint turning the spit.

Be careful in downloads. My protection suite didn’t take alarm at this site; didn’t stop the downloads; and it dumped icons on my desktop that, had I clicked on them, would probably have unpacked God knows what.

The purveyors of these programs have enough computer-un-savvy grandparents and mostly-confuseds out there in internet-land that they can keep themselves in clover just from the clicks. Dis-gusting.

If you’re not sure about a download you want, ask on Wave. One of us is bound to know a safe download site. This morning I was pre-coffee and too complacent. I should have gone to CNet. Those usually are clean.