cracked software

[tali122]

has anyone downloaded any cracked software?- in barely 2 minutes of visiting  2 sites i had a unrequested /forced/suspicous download and a porn redirection on another one- is there a safe place to do it? - just curious

[MargeB]

Negative. There's bittorrent, but even that can be dodgy. Best bet is ebay.

You could try peer to peer, then at least you know you have about a 70 percent chance of picking up something very nasty.

[smorodina]

Yes, I've downloaded loads, and no, there's no safe place. But some are safer than others...

[commoner]

NOPE.......that's the price you pay old son...just PRAY you don't get something more nasty than a bit of PORN...<G>

Cheaper in the long term to BUY your software ;-)

[Hammer]

It's obviously illegal and therefore something none of us ABers would ever do, but *a friend* tells me that he's downloaded a few bits and pieces with bittorrent and never had a problem.

[MargeB]

Would your *friend* be prepared to sell them to *my*friend*? ;-)

[Hammer]

Just asked him, and he said try www.mininova.org

[alunrw]

Torrent sites are quite notorious for bogus files etc. one of my "friends" also uses them without any problem, bt its getting to know the trusted ones - unfortunately a lot of these are now "member only" - as a general one, mininova isnt too bad, but it is hit or miss as to whether its a genuine file or not. - saying that my friend generally sticks to films as opposed to software.
There are some very good public FTP servers with software, but you'd need a FTP client (I use flash FXP) - some of these programmes are 30 day trials, others are the full ones.

[Mattk]

bit torrent is fine 99.9% of the time.mininova.org is an excellent site but more and more of the torrents are posted from another site that requires you to register with them and dl it from their site only.but that is easily done and only takes a couple of mins.

[tali122]

i was referring more to dedicated serial crack sites(where i encountered my probs) rather than p2p- which is safer?

[badams]

Isn't it a good job we are not identified on this site - FAST would have a field day with this thread! I presume the question is hypothetical, since no-one here would actually download any illegal software?

alunrw suggests that in the interest of Academic research into downloading software you should get an ftp client.  Chances are that for most sites, you are already using one!  Just change the http:// in your address bar to ftp:// and Explorer becomes an ftp client. (It also understands other protocols, such as telnet://)

[alunrw]

Tali122 Ive seen the sites you refer to and from what little knowledge I have of them, they do seem to be infested with viruses (virii?) :-) - if you ever come across one you tend to get pop up after pop up after pop up etc..etc.etc.
As mentioned torrent sites may be a safer option, but again beware of these, youre better off going to a site where registration is needed and take part on the forums for a while to gauge what's going on - anything dubious ,or problematic files soon get pointed out and taken down.
I also take on board badams point regarding ftp.- the only benefit I suppoese of a stand alone ftp client is that if you cant connect at that given time, you can set it to keep trying until the server becomes available?

All the best anyway

[badams]

alunrw - I agree entirely - and for people who use ftp a lot, they can set up some of the better programs to operate in the background while they continue to surf, using the spare bandwidth without affecting browsing performance.

I just thought I'd mention the Explorer option for those who may not yet have a good ftp client

[tali122]

stand alone ftps?- i have a vague understaning - but cant make the connection with safe cracked software downloading(explain s-l-o-w-l-y)