
Every Freeware Download Site Is Serving Crapware - aburan28
http://www.howtogeek.com/207692/yes-every-freeware-download-site-is-serving-crapware-heres-the-proof/
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PhantomGremlin
Why do these sites even exist?

If I want HandBrake, I get it from handbrake.fr. I get VLC from videolan.org.
I get OpenBSD from one of its mirrors. Etc. Etc.

So are download sites mainly for the subset of people who a) download software
(a small percentage of all users) and b) don't know enough about that software
to know where it comes from?

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DanBC
In the past people knew the WWW was risky and that you should only download
software from trusted sources. These places quickly became trusted sources.

That's obviously wrong, but the problem wasn't helped by a bunch of projects
using eg Sourceforge for hosting.

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buildops
There's a ton of money in it. IronSource, a few year old startup, is a litte-
known unicorn rolling in money.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IronSource](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IronSource)

~~~
buildops
see forbes [http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2015/02/25/israeli-
un...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2015/02/25/israeli-unicorn-
ironsource-raises-105-million-ahead-of-ipo/)

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cryptos
The sad truth seems to be that there is no other business model for download
sites. Maybe we should really improve micro payments to be able to pay for
good services.

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glonq
Even though I'm pretty disappointed in the quality/quantity of apps in the
Windows app store, 'crapware' is the biggest reason why the app store needs to
exist.

You can't expect non-experts to find, download, and install apps safely
anymore.

