The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

joby_toss wrote:I don't agree with this part of the conclusion:

There are also no safe freeware download sites… because as you can clearly see in the screenshots in this article, it isn’t just CNET Downloads that is doing the bundling… it’s EVERYBODY.

I'm pretty sure Softpedia is not bundling anything in their downloads. And I'm sure there are others as well.

You might consider us a download site as well.

It's great that bundling crapware is not even possible with portable software.

SYSTEM wrote:It's great that bundling crapware is not even possible with portable software.

Sadly, it is. Several apps have one installer for both the local and portable versions. Most of these will do a clean install for the portable version and not require admin rights. Some will require admin rights regardless of which install type you want to do which often makes them inaccessible to end users on machines they don't use. This is usually just because the whole installer is set to require admin rights in its manifest and can sometimes be routed around with 7-Zip or Universal Extractor. A small number of these admin combo installers will also do the same sneaky bundleware tricks and try to install something else locally as you try to just install the portable version.

Nice writedown for a somewhat overlooked aspect of portabilitydom, JohnTHaller. Thanks.

SYSTEM wrote:It's great that bundling crapware is not even possible with portable software.

As I think Haller indicated, it's possible but I get your point. It's harder.  One of my objectives here to help people duck adware/spyware/etc.

Joby wrote:if you're really trying to get something from cnet, use the small direct link at the bottom of the page (available in most cases)

Certainly, but the point that Download.com is highlighting some bad programs and aren't being honest about what they're hosting.  Most of all the issue around turning people off to downloading freeware is a real problem.  If that happened back when I started playing around with software I might never have ended up here.

JohnTHaller wrote:

SYSTEM wrote:It's great that bundling crapware is not even possible with portable software.

Sadly, it is. Several apps have one installer for both the local and portable versions. Most of these will do a clean install for the portable version and not require admin rights. Some will require admin rights regardless of which install type you want to do which often makes them inaccessible to end users on machines they don't use. This is usually just because the whole installer is set to require admin rights in its manifest and can sometimes be routed around with 7-Zip or Universal Extractor. A small number of these admin combo installers will also do the same sneaky bundleware tricks and try to install something else locally as you try to just install the portable version.

I always try to extract an installer first, even the combo ones, and when not possible, I would run it sandboxed/in a VM environment.

BTW, I just discovered it was one of the reasons that killed FreewareGenius.com, another highly respected freeware resource of yore...

• http://www.freewaregenius.com/introduci ... 1639901122

Midas wrote:one of the reasons that killed FreewareGenius.com

I think a good part of it was the Google's SEO issue, but as FWG was responsible for more than one program ending up here on the site, his frustration with crapware is ours.

Yep, it looks like yet another instance of 'winner takes all'. Note that Samer specifically refers to the "crapware infiltration" as the number one reason in his comment.

Of course having Google changes fleece off two thirds of your hard won site's traffic in just one year doesn't really cut it as a strong incentive to keep blogging about freeware...