Once upon a time you just download a free program of your choice  and installed it without the extra junkware, or without installing a tiny .exe program to generate the download. So many traps and tricks just to get  a free program has  just  gotten worse over the years. This new trick involved the download button itself. The first new trap you’ll encounter may be a fake download link — or multiple fake download links — on the software’s web page. You’ll often find large, brightly colored buttons with text like “Free Download” or “Download Now.” These are often just advertisement banners designed to mimic real download links, tricking you into clicking them and installing different software.

As geeks, we know how to dodge all the junk when downloading free software for our Windows PCs. But not everyone knows how. People must be falling for these tricks or they wouldn’t still be in such wide use.

Be aware that such advertisements are trying to trick you — that’s the first step. To identify fake download links, you can generally hover your mouse cursor over the link and look at where it leads.

In the below example, the fake download link leads to a page at “googleadservices.com” — a clear advertising link. If we moused over the real download link, we’d see that it leads to elsewhere on “winaero.com”, the current website we’re on.

Developers, leaving ads like this on your software download pages hurts your users.  Using file distribution sites such as the ones illustrated above, that bury your software download link among all their ads, hurts your users.

Any system that exists will eventually be used to exploit people. It’s a sad fact of human nature, and the web seems particularly vulnerable to it. With a little knowledge, though, you can defend yourself.

These tips should help you spot most fake download buttons.