Download Installer - Mac - cautionary warning

[RogerS]

I made the mistake recently of suspending critical thinking and gayly clicked on a link to download Ghostery onto SWMBO's Mac. Ghostery is a very good tracker blocker. The usual warning screen came up ...'Download Installer...do you wish to continue...blah blah'. So I did and Ghostery was installed and seems to work very well.

Few days after SWMBO mentions that she's getting a nag screen to Activate storage in the cloud. Long story short....that download installer also installed an application called JustCloud (which is an offline cloud backup storage app) and that was where the nag screen was coming from. I wish I could remember the site that I clicked on so I could (a) forewarn you more fully and (b) give them a rollocking. It could have been something like CNET, whatever - I cannot remember and History has been deleted.

JustCloud is bona fide. It could so easily have been malware and the malware trap between my ears was off on holiday that day. So take care and ALWAYS try and download from the software producers' own site. Not a consolidator.

(We run Sophos and so any malware would, most likely, have been picked up)

 

[Droogs]

When you DL something, allways check the spash screen for a tick box about additional software and read the label next to it carefully. A lot of sites now get revenue from additional DLs and use reverse phsycology with regard to permissions. In that they reverse the question and if you tick the box the software DLs

 

[mseries]

Sometimes the offical source gives you free additions unless you tell it not to. Java and Flash come to mind.