Cnet.com is a wonderful company full of bright individuals who are there trying to earn their living by keeping us up to date with new technology and trends in the tech world. It's their focus and driving passion.

However, it seems that their once friendly and safety minded position (which was that any software downloaded from their website download.com would be VIRUS and MALWARE FREE), is no longer touted by them. Apparently it is in THEIR best interest to take money from spyware writers like CONDUIT and OUTFOX TV to allow them to install their junk on your PC. It doesn't affect certain products like AVG or Roboform, because these companies bring people in based on their solid reputation. It is once these users are there on download.com that the website can begin to attempt to lure these folks into trying some of their other stuff.

CLUE #1 - If you go to open a website and it says that in order to view or download their software, you have to use their downloader, instead of offering you the file directly.

CLUE #2 - If you are being led thru a bunch of stuff that seems unrelated to the task at hand, you may well question what it is they are trying to do, and start looking for decline links.

Here's a prime example - While trying to load a PAID version of Solitaire Suite for my Customer over the weekend, I found that they are indeed trying to load up unsuspecting users (of even PAID SOFTWARE) with malware. This was not the manufacturer of the software, but the distributor, Download.com, at fault here. 3 separate pieces of crap tried to load on her system, one after the other. We Declined each one, but you can see how easily you are misled to accepting them, aside from thinking that the button on the left is inactive, you are hardly able to even read the word Decline on the left Button.

PLEASE NOTE: We also notice this kind of behavior when folks try to watch copyrighted material online, while installing their "viewer".

This first one is CONDUIT , which we see on lots of folks systems, and is hard to remove.

This second one is JOTZEY, another nasty one.

Lastly, they are trying to put on OUTFOX TV, which is equally difficult to remove at times.

It's easy to avoid this stuff, when you know what to look for.