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How To Use Freebies
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!
1howto.com
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