Freebies -- Good Deal or a Waste of Time?
There are a great number of "free" things available on the Internet.
Some of the offers are real and some aren't. There are legitimate
reasons for free offers. Sellers give away free samples, for instance.
That's why there are wine-tasting rooms, test-drives for cars and the
opportunity to try on shoes before you buy them! Sellers want you to
buy their products and are willing to let you try them out to some
extent to convince you to buy. And so there are promotions of various
types out there, which can be a good deal for the participants. But
tread carefully! There ARE nuggets to be found, but all that glitters
is not necessarily gold!
For example, a search on "free antivirus" at www.dogpile.com, yields
100+ hits. They run the usual spectrum of most free offers, from
genuine giveaways to outright "sucker traps" that just want your
address so they can drown you in spam! They can be categorized as
1.Genuine, 2.Free but donation requested, 3.Time Based, 4.Free but paid
for by others, 5.Free Sample, 6.Marketing key word tricks and 7.Bait
and Switch address thieves. Let's look at each of these categories.
1. Genuine. For anti-virus software there are some programs out there
that are really free, just for the downloading. Some perform very well
against the well-known annual-fee offerings, even beating them in
various ways.
They give good advice, "...when picking out your antivirus
solution...first of all you want to make sure you get an antivirus
program from a trusted source. Doing a little research on the internet
(websites like this) will help you identify who the trusted providers
of antivirus software are. Always find multiple sources of information,
that way you are more than likely to find a software product you can
get help with and that won't be filled with spyware and adware."
2. Free but donation requested. These are free, but they ask you to
make voluntary donations. Also in this category are those that offer a
limited capacity version, such as do Note Tab (text manager) and Zone
Alarm (firewalls) for free, then try to get you to upgrade to the paid
version. These are legitimate marketing ploys, and maybe the free
version will be all you really need.
3. Time Based. Free to try for 30 days, $30.00 if you decide to keep
it! Not unreasonable. Like a test drive. Many software products use
this approach. Some will just not work after the trial period; others
will periodically degrade their capacities, encouraging you to buy. For
example, www.goodsol.com has a solitaire program that starts degrading
after 30 days. After 60 days or so they shut down the
take-back-the-last-move feature! Maybe by that time you are addicted to
the game and go ahead and buy the full-capacity version. Or maybe you
just play VERY carefully!
4. Free but paid for by others. Paid by advertising (like yahoo mail
and hotmail) is legit. Like commercials on free TV. Somebody's got to
pay the cost of providing the service! Spyware and adware are not O.K.
Their purpose is to track your Internet movements for marketing survey
purposes or deliver pop-up ads to you at random unexpected times. If
you download any program of which you are at all suspicious, run your
anti-spyware program(s) after using them.
Spyware and adware must "call home" to report and get new ads, so you
should severely restrict which of your programs you allow to access the
Internet.
5. Free Sample. Fair enough if it is legit, but remember the fisherman
offers the fish free worms! In anti-virus and anti-spyware programs,
many vendors offer a free online checkout of your system to see if it
has viruses or spyware on it. Most are honest. Some will "plant" a few
of what they are supposed to protect you against, and then "find" them,
to great fanfare, just to prove that THEY are finding things that your
current program can't!
6. Marketing key word tricks. The word "Free" sells! Marketers know
this and put the word "Free" in their headings and where search engines
will look. So when you search on "free anti-virus download" a
marketer's "Download a free scan" offer will match on two words, free
and download. The majority of hits on your search will probably be from
this type of word trick site.
7. Bait and Switch address thieves. The Internet is cracking down on
spam. Pushy salesmen are getting desperate for email addresses to which
they can "legitimately" mail offers. To get addresses they offer all
sorts of outrageous (and some almost reasonable) free offers.
"Congratulations you have just won a Sony laptop computer!", followed
by a request for your home and email address so they can send it to you
(sounds reasonable enough, to get your Sony laptop). This is followed
by requests to answer a "survey", then questions about your interests,
occupation, etc. etc. What is really happening is that they are getting
a profile of you to help them sell your address to their customers!
Finally, it turns out that to "finish qualifying" for your gift, you
have to buy something, then something else, etc. The free laptop (the
bait) has been switched to being required to buy junk you don't need
that ends up costing you more than it would to go out and buy the
laptop!
And the next day there are 40 or 50 new emails in your inbox offering things that they claim that YOU asked about!
In summary, with a little research you can find worthwhile free items
on the Internet. Using common sense you can avoid most of the problems.
Ask yourself, what's in this for the seller? How can he give it to me
for free? And remember, that if it sounds too good to be true, it
probably IS too good to be true. Even a fish wouldn't get caught if he
looked, and avoided worms that had a line going from them up to the
surface!
Otherwise, use caution and enjoy the many GOOD freebies that are out there!