Just an update for everyone:
We take very seriously the responsibility for being a reliable source of information for people - and making sure that people never install a malicious program from some recommendation on our site.
We welcome authors to post about their programs (especially in this section), and we have endeavored to solve this issue definitively rather than leave it as an open and unresolved issue
Anyway, after several of us investigated the program, we then spoke to the author in the chat channel (thanks to Zero3k for arranging this), and I feel fairly confident saying that this is not a malicious or spyware program. I would feel comfortable installing this on my pc. It's very unfortunate for them that they picked a name "orbit" that is shared with a known spyware program, which is causing some false alarms.
The authors seem to me like good people, and they are genuinely interested in writing a free downloading tool.
As I understand it are workong on a kind of peer-to-peer addon which might eventually connect to their server and show information from their site in their program, like news, or current files available on the network, etc. This is not spyware or even adware, in my opinion. It's the same thing itunes and many other programs do. If you don't want this, don't use it, but it's nothing evil. As long as they are not installing any toolbars or hijacking the browser or sending information about your surfing habits to the server, etc., then there is nothing malicious or harmfull about the program.
After some discussion, i do think the authors are going to make some changes to clarify things and make the connection stuff optional, which should help allieve some of the concerns people have had. They've also concluded that they should not have been so crazy with all of the posts they've made recommending the program.. i think it's just a case of them still learning the unspoken rules of the internet.
I've invited the authors to stop by and post and say hello - so hopefully we will hear from them as well.
As always, it is a good idea to be cautious and be careful about installing software - but i want to also remind people not to jump to conclusions and state that programs are malware until you know for sure, because such rumours spread rapidly and can be hard to overcome if you are a developer and they are unfounded.
