One of my resolutions as a new wage-earner :) is not to buy pirated software, or at least as sparingly as possible.

The foremost reason is to support game companies, especially the small ones which need the money. Felt guilty about the fate of Troika and Interplay especially.

Another reason is that there’s strong reason to believe that all the fake DVDs you buy and install don’t come with unrequested “extras”. It’s like eating food without knowing where it came from. I doubt the syndicates producing the DVDs are using the profits for charity either. I’m not saying that software prices aren’t expensive; they ARE. Imagine the cost of a movie ticket in Malaysia being converted directly - would you pay 3.4 * 8 = RM27 to watch a movie? I don’t think so. So it’s no surprise when people say “no f***ing way!” when they see a game costing RM150-RM200 - but at least if you wanna pirate something, download it; don’t buy it.

Here’s an article from CodingHorror.com listing the stuff GameCopyWorld.com (how many of you have been to this site, hmm?) tries to do to your PC the minute you surf there.

Webroot SpySweeper detected the following spies after allowing the installer to run over night.
Virtumonde
Visfx
ZenoSearchAssistant
PurityScan
Trojan Downloader Matcash
Trojan-Downloader-Zlob
BookedSpace
Trojan-Downloader-WaveRevenue
Trojan.Gen
Trojan-Downloader-Prez
MaxiFiles
TargetSaver
Trojan-Poolsv
Trojan-Dropper-Zomavis
Webhancer
Web Buying
Command
Core Adware (CoreAdware is known to use Rootkits {core.sys} to mask its presence.)

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