Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Free Movie Downloads Can Carry Bad Viruses

By Charmaine Chan

There are hundreds of internet advertisements promising free movie downloads of any film ever made - from A to Z - at just one click of a link. And there are times when a person can find something on the internet for their children, and something for themselves to watch later - and get them both for free. However, it's wise to be extra cautious these days - especially when wandering the internet in search of "free" goodies such as movie downloads. So keep the following in mind while attempting to find your favorite films for nothing, and maybe your internet home theater vacation won't become an online adventure from hell:

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.

An easy way to cut down on wasted hours hitting brick walls is to be specific in your keyword selection. Typing in "One hundred percent, no obligation EVER free movie downloads", when looking for the free sites, should turn up the existing few that actually give a person something for nothing.

Expect to be delayed by something at some point - Be aware that once you find an actual free movie website, you still have to find a download link that works. You can expect to run into annoyances like being redirected to a site that costs you money, unavailable pages with error codes, and links that don't take you anywhere.

Always know what operating system your computer uses - Sometimes you'll be asked to pick from a choice of several links - depending on what OS your computer uses. And if it uses one type of system and you pick the link for another, your computer won't be able to read the download, you won't get to watch your movie - and your system could be at risk from corrupted data.

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.

Remembering things like this when surfing for free movie downloads, will help you to avoid paying big costs in unauthorized charges to a bank card or fixing computer crashes later. - 40725

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