Tucows declares end of deceptive ads
Remember Tucows? The download part of the site was very popular in the last millennium as a destination for freeware and shareware.
It fell from grace like many other services of its time as other services became more popular. Nowadays, Tucows is still around but not as popular as download portals such as Softpedia, Cnet Download or even Freewarefiles.
The company started to explore other business opportunities and began to offer domain, email and mobile phone services which make up the bulk of Tucow's revenue today.
The Tucows download portal is still maintained though and while it is not that popular anymore, it is still visited by thousands of users each day.
Tucows Downloads
Tucows announced on May 3, 2016 that it will stop displaying deceptive or misleading advertisement on the company's download site.
The company is surprisingly honest about past advertisement even though it puts it into a greater context by mentioning that other software download sites did the same thing.
But then. Then, things got ugly. Then came the dark days where software download sites needed to wring every possible cent out of their wares. Even Tucows downloads, the seminal software download site, was not immune.
Those days made finding a download button in among the various masquerading ads more like tiptoeing through a minefield. Downloading software became a high stakes mission: Double check the pop-up blocker to ensure it’s working. Fire up AdBlock. Deep breath. Swoop in, grab the software in question and run. Oh yeah, and be exceedingly careful what you agree to in the installation process of said software.
It mentions deceptive or misleading ads on the site itself but also that the software installation itself posed additional dangers for users.
While advertisement won't be a thing of the past, Tucows notes that users won't find flashing ads on the site nor toolbars or pop-ups. What may be displayed instead are plugs for other Tucows services.
Tucows is not the first and probably not the last download service to announce a change in this regard, and much of it may come down to Google announcing that the company's Safe Browsing service -- part of Chrome, Firefox and other browsers -- would flag sites with deceptive download buttons to warn users about them.
Regardless of that, it is a good move by Tucows that should benefit visitors of the site even if they don't use ad blockers.
It is probably too late though for the site to become popular once again considering that there are plenty of alternatives out there that are already more popular and don't use deceptive ads as well.
Now You: Where do you download your software from?
Their mea culpa sounds like that of the corrupt politicians and business people who, just before their sentencing for crimes committed, say how ashamed, sorry and contrite they now are for their conscious actions before. I call bs on the lot.
I will answer your question: official site of the software.
Right! I certainly use sites such as Freewarefiles to alert me when something interesting has come out, but I don’t download software from this kind of intermediate repositories. In most cases it takes just a couple of extra clicks to get to the original developer’s site and download directly from the source. Sometimes this is safer. And in the case of unknown software, a look at the developer’s site can also yield more information – or even help to discern useful utitilties from obvious crap.
For major software and most up-to-date software, I’ve come to rely on MajorGeeks.
For a wider range including more minor software, I use Softpedia and FileHippo
I love softpedia and hate cnet
What?!!! I thought Tucows was dead and gone a long time ago…
I see no reason to use anything other than developer’s official site, Github, Sourceforge, or something like FOSShub.
I love freeware, but had totally forgotten Tucows ever existed,
Sorry Tucows, you had your chance and you blew it.
Thanks for the article, Martin!
It’s clear these days that many websites have chosen deception as their business model, although they prefer to think of it as “marketing”, and they clearly believe their trickery should be totally acceptable. For some users, that behavior may be acceptable, but for me it is not, so I never hesitate to navigate away from such websites, never to return.
That said, I try to get all my downloads directly from the author when possible, but even then only when there is no deception or trickery involved. Otherwise, I search for download websites that are known not to use such tactics to snare unaware victims. Regardless of where a download comes from, I’m careful to check it out carefully with security tools before opening or installing it.
Tucows is a 100 million dollar publicly traded company, so yeah, still very much alive.
Sourceforge? They went to the dark side. oz & jm have the right idea: if you’re motivated enough to download the software, go to the developers/official site to get it.
It is best to go to the developer’s site, but Sourceforge no longer bundles adware. Also, in many cases, the developer hosts the download on Sourceforge.
https://www.ghacks.net/2016/02/10/good-news-sourceforge-stops-bundling-adware-with-installers/
PortableApps, Ninite, MajorGeeks and developer site.
The have been turds long before this. Many, many years back I submitted an email client program for inclusion in their lists. Their email-system specialist “reviewed” it and I got an “F”. No way to ask why, no way to find out what they thought I should do differently to make it acceptable. I finally got the name of their email system specialist and what software did he produce and list on their site? Hmmm, only an email client and surprise- surprise, not long after his latest revision included features from my email client. {sigh}
Have not visited their site this century! LOL
I Used FileHippo until they started including junkware in their installation files. Too bad, so sad. They had such a great layout with easy to find older versions. Now, it’s the developers site.
I always stayed away from Two Cows.
Wow, I hadn’t thought of Tucows for a long time. For a while — back in the 90s or 00s? — it was my first stop for finding and downloading new software. I don’t even remember when I stopped going there, or why.
For a while after that, I learned about a lot of utilities via Shell Extension City (and I think I downloaded them from there), but I believe the site went into hiatus for a time and when it came back it was much less frequently updated.
I don’t try out that much new software nowadays,* and when I do, I just do a Web search for programs with the functionalities I need, search for multiple reviews of potential candidates, and try to download my final choices from the developer’s site when possible.
Otherwise, I don’t think I’ve ever felt abused by FossHub, MajorGeeks, or (I’m not 100% sure of this) SoftPedia. I used FileHippo for a short time but stopped the instant I read that they were experimenting with adware or bundleware in their installers. I don’t like CNET, if only because it was too much work to find the particular version of a program you’re looking for and then find a reasonably clean download link for it. (I began avoiding CNET long enough ago that I no longer remember if there were any other gotchas.)
By the way, bonus points to every site that provides checksums for its downloadable files.
*Tip o’ the hat to Martin: Sometimes, I’ll see something on Ghacks that looks worth trying out.
Snapfiles. I look at a program, I like it. One click and I look at other programs by the same author. Then I go to AUTHOR’S SITE with another click. No strains on my fingers, good reviews, good comments. Clean. I absolutely like that place (Free // Shareware are 2 different indexes).
I use FOSSHUB got this policy from the start by not allowing the deceptive ads and really like the collection of software, not a single ***** software. In the early days I used Soft32 (until they included their own installer), Sourceforge (years of deceptive ads and bundles), FileHippo (testing junkware and still listing bundled software) and Tucows. The problem with all these download sites is the numerous ads they list. Unless you use an ad-blocker their pages look ugly. The deceptive ads is a bonus and the best example is Tucows. It will bring money 1,2,3…10 years but in the end, the visitor will look further and never return. Karma is a …..
“It feel from grace…” I think you meant “fell,” Martin. :)
Softpedia, and sometimes SourceForge. I had a bad experience with Softonic during my vacation a few years back.
Linux user and I get all my software from the Arch/Antegos repositories including AUR. Much easier that way.
(It was) Worse still, their downloads were adware/downware powered installers due to the term Cost Per Install (CPI). Examples? This [email protected] https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/33c2ef66ccad14790d554ce208d9115f68dbd9eb5a3ac48857142a7cc3db9ad6/analysis/1418546484/ Image? Here it [email protected] http://postimg.org/image/8sktiil1d/ Tucows had a deal with DownloadAdmin! What’s DownloadAdmin?! Read https://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2015-040613-1142-99
Needless to mention, d risk of using Brothersoft: its official site was flagged as Malicious site by [email protected] https://www.virustotal.com/en/url/3c1c93b928e39d232a8b1ee85699bbc459cb602cd21b851a45c3b336a1adcfb1/analysis/1414280167/ ; it too contained malicious advertisements. See this [email protected] update-for-pc-1024[DOT]com/?dist_id=365&channel=ac_h1gv&v=icrs&c=e7982022e2acb355c97cb18725d4df5e&cid=18160173701414279281&pubid=298097&v_id=87a51bb02a410dc4856b2d260674b97b I just clicked that page… then I got this [email protected] https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/06edf8440aadabecd33c4b3535ab8a88805ab72b857e400aba75b3fde2412694/analysis/1414282696/
Just visit that risky site (using a USA IP), and take a closer look: http://postimg.org/image/5zvsge5mp/ (this is another pop-up I just got!)
For more downware study, you guys can read this [email protected] https://removeunwantedprograms.wordpress.com/2015/11/15/uninstall-megabackup-for-macwindows/
@Martin: Please review those recommended freeware, shareware, sites and/or other computer programs on your blog, time to time…
Take care…
I am still quit found of the download software websites:
http://betanews.com/
And or:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/
And website’s who are doing there utmost to stay on main good site are:
https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/
http://www.filehippo.com/
http://www.freedownload64.com/
http://www.freewarefiles.com/
https://sourceforge.net/
http://www.techsupportalert.com/