The best thing to do is run the software in a virtual machine, e.g.
https://www.virtualbox.org/. Perhaps even run your web requests through
a proxy server. http://www.publicproxyservers.com/ Depending on what
you mean by "safe", this will help you isolate the thing until _you_
decide it's safe. And, of course, run it through some sort of checker, e.g.
https://www.virustotal.com/en/url/4ce00249c99238a33ca8f7a4a75d763e0035b23ab0ef043129bb6e0e5d0afec8/analysis/
preferably more than one:
http://app.webinspector.com/public/reports/22906975
To take it a few steps further, you can check for spammers:
http://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=blacklist%3akeepvid.com&run=toolpage
See what OS they are (claim to be) running:
http://searchdns.netcraft.com/?host=keepvid.com&x=8&y=1
See how their website has evolved over time:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://keepvid.com
See bitcoin transactions:
https://blockchain.info/address/1NYQHzvg7DT4PDoTm7h6jy46gPKS3gNoZu
And then there's always page 10 of the Google search reslts, which gives
us these sites:
http://blog.teesupport.com/easy-and-effective-guide-for-getting-rid-of-keepvid-com-quickly-manual-removal-guide/
http://www.cleanpcguide.com/remove-keepvid-com-removal-guide-how-to-remove-keepvid-com/
On 07/03/2014 05:59 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
Open source software is less to have spyware or viruses. That’s because
the software is in its preferred high-level form – the recipe is
published. Proprietary software, in contrast, is delivered as a
binary. To know whether bad stuff is in a binary program, a difficult
decompilation and reverse engineering process is needed to get back to
something like the preferred form. Like having to run spectroscopy to
find out what is in a cake. In the open source case, you just bake
your own cake. If you know the ingredients are plausible, and the
structure of the recipe makes sense, then you can feel good about having
a piece of cake. And even if you are not a baker, you may know some
bakers that can give an opinion on the recipe . That doesn’t mean there
aren’t bugs or bad oversights, but malicious behavior is harder to hide.
*From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Nick
Thompson
*Sent:* Wednesday, July 02, 2014 9:43 PM
*To:* Friam
*Subject:* [FRIAM] Source Forge, inter alia
Sorry, everybody.
I guess my question could be stated more broadly, with perhaps some
saving of your time in the long run. How do I decide if a piece of
software, available on the internet is safe or not? I guess one can
look for reviews on “reputable” sites, but then how does one recognize a
reviewing site as reputable. ? I suppose one could look at the webpage
of the software maker and see if the software is being regularly
updated, etc. What about the site on which the software is hosted?
Does that give a clue Does Source Forge screen it’s software? If so, I
couldn’t see any sign of that on the Source forge page.
Perhaps if one of you would provide an answer to me on this general
question, it would you all being bothered by particular versions of it
later on.
Thanks,
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
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