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Softpedia's 100% FREE Award

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Eóin:
Hey all just curious about Softpedia's 100% Award


I've always been fairly trusting of this reward and it's only occurred to me recently that I don't necessarily have a basis for that trust. Now don't get me wrong, I've never heard anything to make me mistrust it, but I'm curious how others here view it.

dk70:
Not worth 10 cents. May be 1 year ago I got into a little argument with a dude who always linked to Softpedia. Took me few minutes to find a nice screensaver with crap in it, I believe it was featuring Paris Hilton. Was not even labeled ADware which they also have - just dont get the Award. There is good and bad Adware. Up to 1 year ago Softpedia did not have many deep thoughts on what they offered - numbers before quality. Possible they have improved. Not really a major effort to declare something certified - what does it mean and include? Do they analyze installation of each program or what?

app103:
Technically it's an ad banner.

They expect developers to put it on their website with a link back to their site, which raises their search engine ranking and brings in more visitors.

But this much I can tell you:

They do run every program on their site at least once, if only to make their own screenshots* of it.



*Except in the case of one of my programs that had no window and they used the screenshot of my shortcut properties box from my site, that I had made to demonstrate how to use the program.

Incidentally, I never submitted this program to them and I don't have a PAD file for it. They took it right from my site without asking and botched the description by leaving out the important half. I never submitted anything to them yet they have almost all my software on their site with the descriptions being a copy & paste from my pages. And except for 1 item there isn't any PAD files for anything. I never made any. They are hotlinking to my files for downloads and using my bandwidth. Does this qualify as both content and bandwidth theft?

Hirudin:
Ah another Futurama fan! I'm diehard myself!

I guess it would depend on where I saw it. If I was looking at the software on the Softpedia site I'd trust it, but when I see that logo on a software site I rarely verify it. I would trust the logo about 15% more than if the developer just wrote the same message "No Spyware..." on their homepage.



...sounds like it to me app103

cthorpe:
Of course, they put that 100% banner on the software description on their site, then rarely host the file itself, so who knows what you are getting.  I only trust it if I see it on the softpedia site, and they are hosting the program on one of their servers.

Even then, I rely on my security programs to verify that it is safe.

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