[nanochip]

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I have a general question about downloading .exe's... while I trust nanochip b/c of all the work he's done on these awesome scripts, how can one be sure they're aren't getting anything malicious when they're downloading and running an .exe like the ones for the latest versions of FTTO and FTShortcuts?

I'm not asking for people to vouch for nanochip, that's not necessary, I'm asking as a computer noob who wants to learn how to protect himself.

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I personally don't worry too much about this. However, I never open unsolicited attachments (in emails) and I back up my computer every day to another hard drive. In 30 years of programming personal computers I've never had a virus (and I've never known anyone to have one, but people always see their computer do something strange and then think it is a virus). The hard drive backups have saved me several times from my own mistakes and hardware failures.

There isn't much incentive for someone to write a poker program and put something malicious in it. There is such a small market for this software, that it would be a very poor choice. A game or music program would have much broader distribution.

So, my advice is to run a virus checker if you are concerned (I don't because they take up too many computer resources), and then only download items that you searched for. I view like the telephone: if someone calls me unsolicited, I never give them any personal info, but if I call some company, I'll give them the minimum that they need to identify me.

That being said, you should be aware that I'm an optimist and I think life is too short [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

nano