Best Resource For Identifying Legit Applications?

bjb writes "While helping a somewhat computer illiterate person figure out a problem recently, they mentioned that PDF files had recently stopped working. Upon investigation I found something installed called 'PDF Suite.' Never having heard of it, I Googled it with 'malware' and other key words, but nothing turned up, though my suspicion remained (and was somewhat confirmed by WOT.) So my question is, where can you go to find out if something is legitimate? Because the person I'm helping is on a dial-up connection, downloading malware detection applications (and updates) is too heavy consider. And I don't maintain a USB stick with such apps, since I don't do this kind of thing very often. Where can you quickly find information?"

Comments

Why are you doing this?

[realmolo]

Helping someone try and fix their computer is an exercise in futility, even if you are getting paid for it. Are you getting paid? And if not, why not? And if so, why are you trying to do this over the phone?

Tell the person that they need to pay you to fix their computer (even if they need to ship it to you). Anything else is a waste of your time.

download.com has no magic wand

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

> see if it's on download.com...this can only prove that it isn't malware

Proof? Dude, what do you think the download.com guys do?

They get given a binary, they run some black box testing on the output of it, then shrug their shoulders and say "looks okay".

The closest you can get to "proof" is if the source code is online as free software, there are developers that don't work for the same company, and there are plenty of users. In those situations, malware tends to be found and removed.

Failing that, the simplest criteria is just that it be free software. That doesn't guarantee anything, but there are almost no cases of free software containing malware. ...or maybe you meant that being on download.com is just a proof that the software isn't *too* bad.

check the repository

[Jessta]

well you just look for it in your distribution's package reposito...oh you're running windows..Microsoft really should have something like that.
I guess they'll get around to it when they're done with all those important 3D desktop effects.