Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Free Movie Downloads Can Carry Bad Viruses

By Charmaine Chan

There are many entertainment sites offering free movie downloads for anything a person wants to see. From those wholesome kid-appropriate flicks to the racier films, it's true that many of them are out there - and free - if someone has hours to spend searching the internet. But film buff beware! There are few "free lunches" - especially these days. Sometimes what you think is a the greatest deal one could ask for, ends up with you paying the price in computer problems and memberships fees you didn't want. So in the interest of keeping your home movie adventures safe and satisfying, keep the following in mind before you jump to download a film:

Make sure the movies are really free - Nothing is more annoying than going through pages of sites advertising film download giveaways, finally finding one and then wasting more time on a five page "free membership" form - only to find out it will cost you, just like anything else. "Free" in this case means you get a "free seven day trial" movie membership, but not until you pay for three months of membership in advance. To say this is highly irritating, is sugar-coating it.

To prevent this from happening, search the internet with key words like "totally free movie downloads". This should bring up any sites that are really offering free movies and free membership sign-up. This will save you a considerable amount of time, and annoyance, in wading through deceptive advertisements.

Be prepared to run into snafus everywhere - Once you actually find a free film site, the next job is to locate a download link that will get you what you want. Although sometimes you can find one immediately, and it goes off without any problems, most of the time you'll have to put in some leg work to get it. You may run into things like broken download links, or ones that lead you to other sites so you can purchase their "free" movie torrent program, or worst of all - to the announcement that the page you want is no longer available.

Know the basics about your operating system - When you do locate a live link to your movie download, you may then be asked to pick the one that corresponds with the operating system your computer is using. It's wise to know at least the name of your OS program, so you don't accidentally choose a download with data your computer can't read that will cause you to miss your movie - and may even crash your system.

Use a portable flash drive - Because of the many viral and hacker threats to computers systems and personal information these days, always use a flash drive to download internet goodies whenever possible, and be sure to scan each of them before viewing what they contain. This is especially important if your computer doesn't already have a good virus counter-attack program installed on it.

It's smart to make it a practice of saving anything from the internet to a portable flash drive - especially things like movies - and then scanning it for any errors before opening it up on your computer. If you don't have access to one of these drives, then save the file to a folder on your computer's hard drive, making sure to scan it before attempting to view the contents.

You can see that there are quite a few things to be aware of when looking for free movie downloads online. But maybe the most important thing you can remember is a lot of times getting something for nothing really means paying big in some way, somewhere down the line. - 40723

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