The other week, I spent several hours doing a favor for a friend. I was reformatting his laptop and reinstalling Windows as well as his other software. I'm sure some of you Mac and Linux folk are about ready to crack Windows jokes, but the method that caused my friend to put a rather dangerous piece of spyware into his computer is no laughing matter, and not just a Windows issue.

The story goes as follows. He wanted to rip some of his DVD collection and then convert them into video files he could play on his smartphone. In order to do this, he would need DVD-ripping software. So rather than shop around and pay a modest amount of money for a software title, he decided he could be sneaky and download a pirated copy off the internet.