It's a normal thing consindering there are two tendencies well known in the current economy: everyone wants good (or excellent) software and everyone wants as cheap as possible. When there are several software that have very similar results but they differ in matter of price/cost the expected choice is the cheaper one. Or the free one, of course.
It's a very normal and healty tendency... with the condition you know what you are doing. There is a danger in any software you get: it may not be what you want, it can get into conflicts with other software you have installed and even can have bad effects (unintentionally) for your device or your important data. These are all problems because of lack of communication or the incompatibily between different software, it can always appear and you can not fully avoid them.
On the other hand, some software (free or not) that were created in order to offer some advantages to their designer instead of their users. For example, some of them create a back door for adware, rendering the system to ads (pop-up and banner) from other companies' websites. Of course, there are adlockers, pieces of script that blocks the online ads, but only a percentage of the internet users have them installed and running. The rest will be picking up ads as thousands.
Have you ever heard about Trojans? The name comes from the Trojan horse, used by the Greeks to put some men inside Troy's walls in order to open the doors and to conquer/destroy the fortress. Some software (especially the free ones) are created just like that: to let open some doors for other people to copy important data or to purge data. When it is inspected, the Trojan looks like a legitimate program and is granted passage by the firewall. After passing through the firewall, the software can be executed from within the system. The best way to protect a system from Trojans is to use an antivirus and a firewall that performs deep packet inspection. This means that the package and its contents, rather than just the package, are examined by the protection software.
Besides Trojans, the software can contain spyware. That piece of software code is used to monitor people as they work on their device (no matter if it's a computer, tablet or smartphone) or they surf the internet. Spyware can cause your device to run extremely slowly, alter system configurations, and even allow unauthorized third parties to access the system.
There are three advices I give you when you are decided to use free software (or any software):
- always back-up your important data periodically. It can be on daily basis (when there are critical data) or once a week, but it should not wait more that 7-10 days until you back it up. In the case when your computer crashes or there are critical damage to your tablet or smartphone you won't loose all your data, you may loose only the data since your last back-up.
- use and always upgrade your antivirus and firewall. Use only good antivirus and firewall. Lately the developing companies (such Comodo) offer them in one package, so it's easier to maintain. There is no bulletproof antivirus and firewall, but it will help you and protect your device in the most cases.
- always check and verify the software you use. The best advantage of the internet is that the information is (almost) always available. If you are searching for some software and you get a list with possible choices you should search for more information about the items. There are good chances that other people already used that particular software and they have something to share (good or bad) about it ahdn their experience.
