#+TITLE: Cracked Software: A Very Bad Good Idea…
#+SETUPFILE: ../../theme_lev1.setup

Sarah had just finished her multimedia graphic training. Now she was
ready to enter the job market. Sociable and good company, she had many
friends on social networks, and an endless directory of telephone
contacts. Many people had already asked her to do some minor graphic
work. Where possible, in the past she had offered her work for free, as
a courtesy, but then the studies had absorbed all her limited time and
often she had to refuse to help. 

But now things had changed. She intended to accept all the proposals that came to her, and to live off
her talent by working independently.

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It is never easy to start a business. Administrative formalities can
sometimes seem endless. And then to start off on the right foot you need
to have the right equipment. It takes initial capital. 

Regarding this point Sarah was lucky enough to be able to count on her parents. They
had bought her a cutting-edge computer: ultra-fast processor,
high-performance video card, top of the range RAM memory, SSD hard disk.
A true racehorse. To top it off was an incredible screen. 

Sarah’s parents wanted the best for their beloved daughter: thirty-two inches, a
stunning resolution. The quality of the images it offered almost seemed
to suggest that reality is in low definition. Indeed, it certainly was!

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Unfortunately Sarah’s equipment was not yet complete. Now she needed the
software to express all her creativity. Thanks to her training, she had
become an expert in a famous software suite, a set of specific programs
capable of coordinating with each other. It was said to be the best
thing for graphic designers. Sarah could not even imagine working with
other programs, also because she wasn’t aware of alternative softwares.

When she found out the price of the license, she couldn’t believe her
eyes. She would have had to pay an impossible amount! Given the
investment already made by her parents, she didn’t dare ask for their
help again. It was really too much! Above all, she knew that it was
possible to do otherwise, also because she had already done it with her
old computer.

Where money does not go, relationships can go. Sarah picked up the phone
and called Maeve, an old school friend.

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“Hi Maeve, it’s Sarah! Look, I have a new computer, but I don’t have any
software yet. Could you crack them for me?”

“Um, you know, it’s becoming a little more difficult than it once was… but I think I might be able to help you, not without some effort
anyway… See you tomorrow? 6 pm at your place?”

Maeve was a real friend!

“Ok, great! You are really great! I’ll buy the beers. Cool, see you
tomorrow!” Sarah was super excited.

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The next day, as expected, Maeve went to Sarah’s house. She had prepared
all the stuff the day before. So she arrived equipped with an external
hard disk on which she had downloaded all the necessary softwares. Now
they just had to find the updated crack. 

She knew all the right sites. She just typed warez, crack, serialz or keygen, followed by the name of
the desired software, to access a lot of results of the different search
engines, more or less specific.

It didn’t always work, but after trying and trying again, at the end of
the day you were always going to find something useful. And with the
activation codes, the appropriate procedures, the crack of the
configuration files and so on, all the windows that prevented the
installation of the softwares, or the block of advanced functions and
other similar limitations, disappeared as if by magic.

It didn’t take long for Maeve to find the right crack. Sarah was in
seventh heaven. Great! Fantastic! The two friends were finally able to
celebrate their victory against the malicious proprietary software. They
had won!

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But the enthusiasm did not last long. A few days later, Sarah noticed
some small changes on her computer. A somewhat disturbing search bar had
appeared in her browser. It also seemed to her that more advertisements
than usual appeared on her screen: “Lose weight in three days!”, “Become
a millionaire in one click!”, “Find your soul mate” and so on. 

At first, she didn’t worry about it; but with the passage of time she began to
face increasing difficulties in living with these unwanted
interruptions. It seemed to be at the amusement park, at the casino,
with all the lights and colors and sounds that tried to pull her to
their side, to capture her limited attention!

Sarah tried hard to get rid of it, but she couldn’t. The thought that
all that all that mess could be connected to the programs with which
they had cracked the proprietary software suite never occurred to her.
Among other things, it seemed that the computer chip had suddenly become
slow… but how was it possible? Should she upgrade the hardware
already? Buy more memory? A more powerful processor?

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Maeve once again came to rescue her. But she couldn’t get anywhere. She
tried everything, from deactivating the plugin that seemed to control
the anomalous search bar in the browser, to eliminating it; she tried to
reinstall the browser, to change it… nothing to do. 

The malware remained silently and tenaciously hidden in the very bowels of Sarah’s
computer and it was now very difficult to be able to remove it, also
because how could you bring the computer to the customer service with
all the illegal software?

* To Understand
  :PROPERTIES:
  :CUSTOM_ID: to-understand
  :END:

Using cracks, keygens and activation systems to crack proprietary
software was no different than playing Russian roulette. Sometimes
everything went smoothly, but often there was damage! These small
executable files rarely delivered the keys to the more expensive
software for free. Very often they took advantage of the accesses
guaranteed at the time of their installation to install in turn all
kinds of malware, viruses or Trojan horses. 

An effective ploy to mask the scans of antivirus software; often README files even required that
you had to disable the antivirus to ensure that the crack worked. As if
to say: open doors and windows, we are coming to place some microphones
and cameras in your home!

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Sometimes a simple visit to a crack website was enough to infect your
machine. By the way, many were able to run scheduled scripts to exploit
some security vulnerabilities on the target machines. Often the most
malicious results were at the top of the search engine results. 

But don’t think you can stay safe using peer to peer networks, such as
bittorrent or the like: most of the time the crack was the same, spread
everywhere. The same reasoning applied to the already pirated complete
software (also called /warez/).

Recall that then many countries in Europe and in the United States, the
law imposed severe sanctions (up to several thousand euros of fines and
two years in prison) for those found guilty of participating in computer
piracy. In addition to the legal risks, the use of cracked software in
the business context is pure madness in terms of IT security. If you
have been warned about something you are half way to being saved.

* Good Practice
  :PROPERTIES:
  :CUSTOM_ID: good-practice
  :END:

If you really have to use proprietary softwares, use the original
software, even if it is expensive.

In any case, why don’t you think about /open source/ alternatives or
/free software/? In the vast majority of cases it is possible to obtain
exactly the same result with these softwares and all this without paying
a cent, at least not to install the program!

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Of course there are big differences. First of all, a collective
assumption of responsibility, given that the proper functioning of open
and free software requires the active contribution of as many people as
possible. Possibly also through donations and incentives to be allocated
to free projects.

* Alternatives!
  :PROPERTIES:
  :CUSTOM_ID: alternatives
  :END:

You are interested in free software, but don’t know where to start? The
French association Framasoft lists many free and free alternatives to
the most popular software and services. In particular, it provides an
easy-to-use database; just go to the following address and type in the
name of a proprietary software which you are seeking alternatives for.

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https://framalibre.org/alternatives

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The same association also offers free services, from cloud solutions to
collaborative writing, from shared agendas to software /versioning/
systems.

There are also independent servers that offer various services to
related subjects, usually for political and non-commercial purposes.

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We remember that in any case that free does not mean free: financial
support to associations and foundations engaged in the dissemination of
free software is always welcome, we can all contribute. It is a matter
of rolling up our sleeves, and not to assume that the only possibilities
are those offered by proprietary software.
