The Trust Factor, Safe Download Sites

Get Great Software and No Viruses

Every month or so a new threat to PC user security makes news headlines. Home computer users end up afraid to open their email attachments or visit websites or even copy files from one disk to another, for fear that a trojan horse, spyware, virus, worm, or other malware will destroy their computer and cut them off from the connected world.

Trust. The single word is what it all boils down to.

When someone clicks an "OK" button to continue after their computer just popped up an alert saying: "WARNING! Something may happen if" they continue, (to open a file, accept a cookie, enter form data, etc).

Whether it's the latest media player, freeware chat tool or other updates for your software, chances are you will want to download files from the internet at some time.

Most problems arise from installing software that contains malicious code. Whether it's a "music sharing" site's toolbar, or an online game, or a demo of a commercial software product, allowing an application to execute on your PC opens the door to all types of possible problems.

Back to the trust issue. Most reputable software developers make their software available not only on their own website, but on major file download sites.

Some of these download sites have been around since the web itself -- some were online before PC's had web browsers and operated as FTP repositories.

To protect their online reputations, these sites vigorously screen all files for possible threats, scams, piracy problems and other issues the average user is not trained to consider every time they click a "Download This File" link.

The list below contains information about some of the most trustworthy file download sites on the web and a brief description of what can be found there.

Download Sites: