Downloading Software Safely Is Nearly Impossible
The problem is much worse than this contrived 'I cant download PuTTY securely'. Lets choose an example, of which I have had my hands in with my tech support job.*
Goal: "Download Firefox"First, the user was using IE. And the user is not a tech savvy user (as in, cannot read words on the screen). Turns out, the user's computer was infested with spyware and garbageware. Mainly Conduit and others.Evidently, user "searched" for firefox rather than follow my directions to type in the address bar https://www.mozilla.org . This behavior lead him here: http://firefox.en.softonic.com/Normally, I would use a remote support tool and just do the cleaning for the user. However, this client comes from another area in which we are not allowed to use the remote support tool.In the end, I tried to have user uninstall the bad-firefox, and attempt to install the good, but the softonic installer installs a ton of crap everywhere. User got very frustrated and hung up when having him read the uninstall programs installed list.
*That is the danger to most users, running Windows.EDIT: For the user whom penalized my comment score, why?