More and more people are learning about the awesome resource on the Internet known as freeware. Freeware is the shorthand term used to describe free software. Yes, freeware is an amazing resource and I have been an enthusiastic user and promoter since I learned about it years ago.
What I found interesting, though, were the number of people I spoke to about freeware who said that they would never use it because they heard that free software contains viruses. My first thought was that this was just not a true statement. I have been using freeware for years and have never been infected.
However, after giving the idea more thought, I realized that such a concern is not without merit. Because Ive been online since the time of the old BBS systems, Ive learned whom I can trust and whom I need to stay away from. But to a lot of people, downloading software from the Internet is a scary idea.
How does the average, non-technical person know what is safe and what isnt? If you do a search on Google for the term freeware, more than 170 million pages are returned. The problem is that if you just start downloading software that looks good, you can get yourself into a lot...