3- Do not install "dubious" software

This suggestion will, at first, seem ambigous - after all, what makes something "dubious"?

In this case, there are three possibilities:
  1. legitimate software which was tampered with, altered, to include something dangerous
  2. something dangerous, which pretends to be legitimate software (think of it as "having a false label")
  3. software which is dangerous itself
In the first two cases, the way to avoid trouble is simple: only install software downloaded from the maker's site, or from official "mirrors", and not from other places (especially peer-to-peer networks).

The third case is more complex, because the maker himself is dishonest. There isn't a "magical formula" to determine whether a piece of software is trustworthy or not, but the following tips may be useful:

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