Free Screensavers Forever

What do you think of free animated wallpapers, screensavers, cursors & other cute things that float around?

Okay, I know I shouldn’t, but I had downloaded a lot of different animated wallpapers, like a moving waterfall, a Halloween theme, a Thanksgiving theme, Christmas theme. Also animated screensavers, cursors & even this butterfly, ufo alien, this shoot em’up widget & other ones I had found in Yahoo Widgets, but then my computer got a virus & I didn’t know if maybe one of these programs was the reason, so I’m staying away from all of those animated programs.

They are full of spyware and adware. Especially the ones you see the most all over the place. Keep in mind that “adware” isn’t necessarily dangerous – it just means you get a lot of ads popping up. However, many of them have spyware viruses, trojans and all those fun goodies (collectively known as “malware”) that are really bad mixed with adware – which makes adware bad instead of just annoying.

I, however, still like cute cursors and change my desktop theme probably weekly. But I spend (too much) time looking for reliable websites and I scan each file I download before opening it. It’s really hard to tell at first – but once you start looking at them a while you can tell who’s got the adware and who doesn’t. I’m pretty sure anything that has freeze.com or screensavers.com in it is bad – and I’m sure Zwinky has adware. I saw a list somewhere. Bonzi Buddy, Gator, CoolWebSearch, are all bad. Anything that is more numbers than letters or has a non-sensical url is probably bad also.

Here’s a wiki entry on spyware:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware

On adware (and a lot of adware can contain spyware):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adware

There are legitimate desktop themes out there…it’s a matter of getting past the big commercialized websites and finding the hidden gems. Also websites like National Geographic or something like that usually has desktops, screensavers and all that stuff that are safe. (I’m sure there’s more). Sometimes you can look for things like a horse-lovers website might have a bunch of stuff with horses, a bird magazine might have bird stuff…once you start playing with your computer and it’s settings you can learn how to customize everything even more. I might have a desktop from one website, cursors from another, icons from another then sounds from another. (I don’t use screensavers).

Oh ya, I’ve gotten some from www.download.com. They have reviews for all their downloads and test them – although they don’t catch everything. But it’s a good reliable place to check out – just read the reviews.

Here’s a list to watch out for:
http://www.geocities.com/spywarekilla/spyware_blacklist.html

Here’s a loooong list of spyware “cookies” -
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.txt

I think if you go to Control Panel Internet Options there’s a button to see what cookies are listed….I’m sure firefox has something under internet options to view cookies…

Here’s another list:
http://spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm#products

I haven’t downloaded and desktop/screensaver stuff from yahoo widgets but I’ve download other widgets from yahoo, google, opera and firefox and haven’t had any problems.

In time you’ll become familiar with what to look for. Meanwhile, get a good virus programmer and scan stuff before you open it or execute it. Oh, that another thing. If you have a choice to “run” or “save” – it’s better to “save” your download first – then scan it – then run it and then you have more “say” in what files go where, whether a toolbar might be installed and stuff like that. And always make sure you check “custom” to see if anything is hidden.