Forum feedback forum: I HATE CNET SECURE DOWNLOAD!!!!!

Why not go where they don't have that?

You may want to see CNET's Download.com's response to this post;
http://forums.cnet.com/7723-12543_102-537471.html

It may explain what you are seeing.

Mark

If I understand the link Mark put in his post right, CNET is going to require people to be a member and sign in before downloading. Claiming it will stop people from abusing their services. I am still trying to figure out how downloading from them could be considered a method of abusing the site. Sounds good but maybe someone should inform CNET and CBS that their are plenty of sites on the net that do not require this. I think CNET has hired someone from Google and is adapting the ole tack of collect and save everything they can about a user. Maybe it is a way of punishing those who will not use the secure downloader or maybe they did not get enough people to use Tech Tracker. It is my understanding that both these programs search your hard drive for programs that you have and report back to a main server what you have and then make recommendation to you for downloading other programs. I think it is called Open Candy. I think it depends on which side of the fence your on but I consider it malware. I know those who profit from selling info on user and programmers will disagree with me. I know there has been great debate in the forums on this subject. I will not install any program that uses the Open Candy installer. My AV program still reports it as malware and the day they stop will be the day I switch AV. I know Open Candy has a good PR program and has gotten a couple of AV developers to drop their warnings.

For those who want to avoid this, they can click Quick Specs on the page of the program they are looking at and on the following page you will find a link to the developers site. You can download the program from them and no longer abuse the Download.com web site.

Like I said Bob, it is a matter of opinion and and how you make your money. I believe anything that places a file on my puter and searches my hard drive and reports what it find is malware. If they would give fair waring that this is going to happen and give the user an op out feature I would not have a problem with it. Shoot, maybe they are but since it has been many months since I encountered Open Candy I am not sure what mehtod they are using. My Av will trip and give me a waring that the program has Open Candy and it gets deleted that very second. I know the first time I encountered it, the AV program I had let it blow by and it was my firewalll telling me that a program that I did not authorize to be on my hard drive was trying to connect to the internet. WIth a little research I found out that it was Open Candy and I change AV programs the next day to the one I have now. I was never asked if I wanted Open Candy to do a search and make any recommendation to me but yet here it was trying to phone home and report on the programs I had installed. By my definition, that is malware, but I do not profit from such tactics nor do I write programs anymore.

I had to tell my story in another topic. See "sad commentary"

I will just use the authors sites from now on. I might use cnet for researching downloads, but will go dl them elsewhere.

-cheers