Searching for Snow Leopard? Careful.
and Brad Pitt may reign supreme as the most dangerous Internet searches, but those looking to score illicit copies of Apple's new operating system ought to be wary, too.
A post at warns of bogus sites claiming to offer free downloads of Apple's Snow Leopard, which really serve up "a DNS changer Trojan detected by Trend Micro as ." Once activated, the Trojan reportedly opens a door to all sorts of malware.
Really? People are that anxious to get a free advance copy of Snow Leopard. It's a $30 upgrade, and less than a day away from being legitimately available. At this point (and price point), why not wait and go legit?
Despite some who would ding Apple for , the new Mac operating system is being hailed as a sleek upgrade by many in the tech press. New York Times tech columnist writes: "the big story here isn鈥檛 really Snow Leopard. It鈥檚 the radical concept of a software update that鈥檚 smaller, faster and better 鈥� instead of bigger, slower and more bloated. May the rest of the industry take the hint."
The Wall Street Journal's , in reviewing Snow Leopard, points out that though Apple officially requires users to have purchased its pricier predecessor, Leopard, to get the $30 upgrade price, it's possible to, well, cheat. "Apple concedes that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade will work properly on these Tiger-equipped Macs, so you can save the extra $140," he writes.
That, of course, violates Apple's end-user licensing agreement, or EULA, but it's still possible. The reason? As PC World's points out, "Apple's discs do not require a CD key when installing the OS. They also don't require registration after installation. And as the whole Snow Leopard OS comes on the Leopard upgrade disc, without any built-in software restrictions, Apple makes cheating easy."
It's a pirate's paradise, apparently. Just remember what your mother told you: cheaters never prosper.
Meanwhile, points to a couple ways to get free legitimate copies of Snow Leopard, through tie-ins with software companies.
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