Free Screen Savers and Digital Music Can Be Crippling

It's a nice quiet Saturday afternoon and you decide to search the web for a new screen saver or some digital music.

"Wow, this is fun," you think to yourself. "And there's so much out there that's free, I don't know why people actually pay for this stuff."

Well, if you decide to go the free route, I can almost guarantee that you will be the one paying.

"Web security company McAfee Inc. estimates that nearly three-quarters of all sites listed in response to Internet searches for popular phrases like "free screen savers" or "digital music" attempt to install some form of advertising software in visitors' computers. Once lodged there, spyware can sap a PC's processing power, slow its functioning, and even cause it to crash."

Did you get that? Three-quarters! For the mathematically challenged (like me) that's 75 out of 100 sites returned for searches for "free screen savers" and "digital music" contain potentially harmful spyware. The odds are against you.

So please, think twice the next time you're looking for free stuff on the Internet. It's not all it's cracked up to be.

Stephanie

Read the rest of the article in Business Week here.

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