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There is a common social idea that more often than not, people cannot get something for nothing. Or the idea of TANSTAAFL — There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
The general idea is that while something might appear to be free there actually are underlying or hidden costs.
Merchants have a somewhat similar phrase called loss leader. The phrase refers to products that are sold at or below cost to lure customers into buying other products, usually with marked up prices. Milk is a classic loss leader and is always in the back of the store, thereby requiring customers to wade through the store to view other products.
Customer “loyalty” cards used in stores might save a few cents when buying merchandise but come with the same TANSTAAFL price of tracking and data mining.
People who manufacture printers do not make much money manufacturing printers or software drivers. While printers are not free, developing the drivers is viewed as an expense. Profits are realized in toner and ink cartridges, often designed to be proprietary and designed with vendor lock-in in mind and sold with high mark-ups. This is the classic Gillette Razor and Blade marketing strategy. Sell the printers almost at cost and then gouge users for the parts needed to keep using the device. Printers might be sold at cut throat prices, but customers pay dearly for the toner and ink cartridges.
Ebook readers are designed the same way. Profit margins are small with these handy devices. The real money is made after the sale when users buy ebooks. Actually, users do not buy ebooks. Much like computer commercial software, retailers only license digital books. Proprietary protection mechanisms, called Digital Restrictions Management, prevent users from selling ebooks in the same manner as books made from dead trees. Because these devices are built with a wifi connection, the internal operating system software is designed to report every user’s reading data and habits.
The world wide web is no exception. OpenDNS, a DNS service, is designed to provide free filtering services to home users, but their usage policy indicates there is a loss of privacy and the price is data mining.
Modern web based social media has a price. When commercial interests are behind any free online service or app, such as Facebook, Skype, Google+, Chrome, or Twitter, a sane presumption is that you, the user, are the product. While these services are free in terms of direct monetary exchange, these services are designed to track and mine data about each user and visitor. Privacy is ignored. Privacy policies are irrelevant. Social media providers know a lot about users.
Almost all Google products and services come with the same steep price: data mining. Google is an online ad business. Google is not a search engine. The search engine is only a single product, a conduit for data mining and selling advertising. Google products and services are funnels for data mining. Google’s mission “is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Accessible and useful, of course, as long as revenues are in the billions and data is easily mined.
ChromeOS, the computer operating system used on Chromebooks, and Android, the operating system used on many smart phones, come with the same TANSTAAFL price: data mining and spyware. ChromeOS, Chromebooks, and Android all are Google products. Often these systems come with hardware lock-in, preventing users from removing PUPs — potentially unwanted programs. Another way to remember the acronym is use the phrase “Potentially Odorous Software.”
Not wanting to be ignored, this past summer the Microsoft folks released Windows 10 as a data mining product. For free. Pretty much everything a user does on a Windows 10 system is recorded and the information sent back to Microsoft servers. Much has been written about how Windows 10 intrudes on user privacy and mines user data.
Protecting privacy is a steep uphill struggle with any “free” product or service.
Bundleware is another example of TANSTAAFL. Bundleware started before the web became mainstream. In the 1990s when software was installed primarily through CD optical disks, vendors such as printer and anti-virus providers often included additional software on the disk. Customers only wanted necessary software and instead ended up with a slew of other unwanted software. While avoidable, less experienced users typically did not know how to avoid the unwanted software.
One goal of “bundling” is to subsidize software creators or to monetize loss leader products, such as printer drivers. The authors of such software want to monetize their effort and rather than sell the software for a nominal price, instead join forces with developers of unwanted software. Bundleware is commonly referred to as awfulware, bloatware, junkware, scamware, and crapware. This unwanted bundled software comes in the form of malware, adware, web browser toolbars, web browser home page hijackers, and utilities of questionable function. Often these unwanted programs are difficult to remove.
This bundleware approach succeeds because most computer users are non technical and they don’t know any better. Non technical users are easy targets. Does that mean non technical users need to always pay for software to avoid bundleware?
There are ways to find quality software that is free in cost without installing unwanted software.
- Avoid web sites using bundleware techniques.
- Sound to good to be true? Trust your instincts and do not download.
- Ignore unsolicited offers, which usually contain bloatware or malware.
- Resist dancing pigs. Do you really need “shiny” software or Yet Another Screen Saver or Wallpaper?
- Ignore download advertisements. Software obtained in this manner is sure to contain bloatware or malware.
- When installing software, pay attention to all dialogs and avoid agreeing to installing additional software.
- Run away from web sites when the owners offer their own installer programs.
- Read, read, read.
That latter option means pay attention. Many bundleware web sites provide multiple download links, all designed to trick visitors into using a bundleware site to obtain the desired software. Do not use such sites.
That latter option also means read the installer dialogs. Do not blindly click Next, Next, Next, OK. These installers succeed in installing bundleware because most people fail or refuse to read the installer dialogs.
Some reasonably trusted web sites for finding quality free software:
Gizmo’s Freeware
Major Geeks
Softpedia
Popular download sites to avoid (URLs intentionally not provided):
Softonic
Download 3000
CNET Download.com
Tucows
The Free Site
Brothersoft
FileHippo
Understand that the people who own and manage these bundleware download sites are experts at manipulating and social engineering. An insightful article of what happens when downloading apps from CNET download.com is available here.
By the way, if you use an email product called Incredimail, consider finding a new email client. Incredimail suffers from being bundleware, adware (advertisement-supported), buggy, a system resource hog, is difficult to remove, acts like malicious software even if benign, is difficult to avoid additional fees, uses cookie tracking, supports browser home page hijackers, and is, overall, “Potentially Odorous Software.”
Incredimail is an example of dancing pigs. Decide for yourself by browsing any of the following articles:
Perion Network
Google poised to ban IncrediMail again?
Smilebox. How to remove?
Incredimail. How to remove?
How To Remove The SmileBox EN Toolbar Hijacker
IncrediMail Acquires World’s Most Annoying App, Smilebox
How to Uninstall or Remove Incredimail
Incredimail is spyware. The longer you use it the worse off you will be.
An excellent and trusted free email client is Thunderbird, developed and supported by the Mozilla Foundation folks, the same people who develop and support the free Firefox web browser.
Do not confuse freeware, which is proprietary, closed source, and has a restricted license, with free software, also known as free/libre software or open source software, which also is free in price.
The difference is free/libre software is trusted and distribution is controlled with safeguards. There is no bundleware with free/libre or open source software software. No bloatware, no junkware, no adware, no scamware, no browser hijackers. The Linux operating system is an example of free/libre or open source software. More about free/libre software in the next issue of Tech Talk.
Do not be tempted by many “free” software offers. More often than not you are a targeted victim and not a valued or respected customer.
Technical trivia: The first optical disk using reflective technology and a laser beam was invented in the Netherlands in 1969. The compact disk (CD) introduced commercially in the 1980s could hold 650 MB of data or about 75 minutes of music when formatted as an audio CD. Compression schemes pushed that amount to about 700 MB. The single-sided, single-layer DVD (digital video disk) holds about 4.7 GB of data. Single-sided dual layered DVDs hold about 8.6 GB. Double-sided, single-layer DVDs hold about 9.4 GB of data. Modern dual layer Blu-ray disks can hold up to about 50 GB of data.
Next issue: When Free Is Really Free.
Ever wonder about the invention of music? This short video might help.
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