'How to Remove Malware from Your Windows PC.' PC World. 'May 21st the end of the world? (But malware still alive!)' May 18, 2011. A reputable site doesn't have to call itself and use the phrase 'free music downloads' in every sentence on the site's main page to come up as the top search result when you Google 'free music downloads.' You want to avoid sites with names like download_your-favorite?.Īnother red flag is something called 'keyword stuffing.' This is a search engine optimization tool that shady web designers sometimes use to get their sites to rank high in search engines like Google. This kind of goes hand in hand with long domain names.

Are there a lot of delimiters in the domain name? A delimiter is a symbol like a dash, underscore, or even a question mark to break up text.

Does the domain name seem way too long? Researchers found that extremely long domain names, like, are more risky than shorter names like.

com isn't the suffix for the URL, it's a subdomain they're using to make the URL intentionally misleading. org) in the wrong place? For example, is the URL or ? In the second scenario, the. Here are other some signals that should give you pause before you download: That means that before you download a thing, you should look for a trusted file-sharing site.

This is sometimes called a 'drive by download,' because it happens without you doing anything but loading the website. Sometimes just loading a website can expose your computer to malicious software.

If you want a truly safe download, you need to find not only a trustworthy site but remember that each file you download could contain malware.ĭownloading files isn't the only way to get malware on your machine, though. Sure, the room itself could have hazards, but even at a reputable gym, the owner can't control what customers are keeping in every locker. Think of peer to peer sites as big locker rooms: the site provides a place for individuals to share files, and the site owners don't monitor each file that a user uploads. How can you tell if you're opening up a legit download site or if the file you grabbed is packed with viruses? The short answer is that you can rarely be 100 percent certain a download itself is OK.

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