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Is Downloading Ringtones Safe?

Posted by gcfraley / Category:

By Owen Jones


A lot of people worry about whether downloading a ringtone from the Internet in order to personalize their phone is safe or not. Regrettably, there is no definitive reply to this question. 'Is downloading ringtones safe' is a part of a broader question, namely: is downloading anything from the Net safe or not?

Broadly speaking, the more up market the site you are downloading anything from, the less chance there is that you run the risk of downloading a virus. There is never zero danger, but there certainly is a great deal less. This means that you have to look at the web site that you would like to download from and calculate the probabilities.

The way to start doing this, for ringtone download web sites and all others too, is to look at the quality of the site. Does it look cheap? Does it look as if it was thrown together by an amateur or by someone who does not have quality on his or her mind. If the site does not 'feel correct' or if the costs are much cheaper than elsewhere, be suspicious.

Why would anyone want to trick you into downloading something from them - say a ringtone? Well, real ringtone aggregators (web sites that sell ringtones) pay royalties, so spurious sites will probably be breaking laws.

You might not mind about that, but what if there is a problem? Do you want to be involved? Or if your ringtone does not work, who are you going to complain to?

Another reason for people to sell you ringtones cheaply or give them away is so that they can put a tracking cookie on your computer hard disk. This tracking cookie will phone home each time you push keys on your keyboard (a key press tracker) or it could scan your hard disk for financial data.

For a further check, you could insert the name of the web site into a search engine in a style like: 'worries with xxxx' or 'ringtone scam sites xxxx', where 'xxxx' is the name of the ringtone site under your scrutiny.

Price is another cause for concern. There are sites that offer free ringtones, but most websites sell them. The average cost is about $3 for one or unlimited downloads for six months for $15 or $25 for a year. If the costs are much less then allow alarm bells to ring.

The ultimate manner of preventing these things from happening is to have the best antivirus (AV) software installed on your computer and mobile phone or download the ringtones to your computer and then transfer them to your handset by Bluetooth.

The answer to not having to worry about downloading anything from the Net is AV software. The very best costs only $60 for two years or so, so do not be mean, be protected.




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