My wife is researching our family tree,?

Question:she buys some of the magazines to do with this topic.My question is,are the free computer discs that are stuck on the mags safe to use,or can you get viruses?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: she buys some of the magazines to do with this topic.My question is,are the free computer discs that are stuck on the mags safe to use,or can you get viruses?

What can be just as bad as a virus is spyware. If they are free, there is a good chance they have spyware. Spyware sometimes can keep your computer from booting up.

There will be a disclaimer on the magazine to the effect you are using the disc at your own risk.

If you have an anti virus program on your computer, ask it to check the drive the disc is in before you open it.

I am doing mine, why don`t you take a look at ancestry.co.uk, some of it is free, I pay about ￡65 a year.

They will be well checked and will generally be safer than downloading anything from the net - after all - you can just stop buying their magazine if they infect you!
They'd be a bit silly to purposefully give you infected software!

Try ancestry.com

Of course there safe think what a bad cd would do to a computer mags sells record,

buy a copy of XP and get a virus no its safe there checked carry a warning so you Can not say that's were you got it from

Yes they are safe, but the ones that I have purchased are just adverts. They were just selling certain web site subscriptions, they weren't worth the money in my opinion.
Be sure to tell your wife that if she needs any help at all with the research she could always post the question. There are some excellent sites for genealogists.
http://www.familysearch.org/ this one is completely free as you probably know.

http://www.ancestry.com/ subscription only the global package is incredible.

Hope this helps, and good luck to your wife with her research.

http://www.ancestry.co.uk/ subscription.

my son and daughte informan me that some of the discs can down load some viruses

if you are really getting into genealogy. go to staples or office max and look for fmaily tree maker. It cost about 20-80 dollars. you
can get up to 1 year of free use of there web site.
www.ancestry.com
they update information each day

as to free cd/s you get what you pay for.sorry to say. I have been doing thisw for 40 years of my life. I cant find a better site to go to.

Many of these discs contain information that is difficult if not impossible to find on the web, I've found the ones I've used to be OK. Just stick it in and run it through virus checker to be certain.

ps you're helping your wife. Aren't you?

I have used a lot of these free disks in the past when I was first on the PC, and have never had a problem with viruses etc. Some of them occasionally wouldn't run, but no bugs. It would be more than the magazines reputation to put a virus on your PC.

However, I too belong to Ancestry.co.uk, and when you first sign up if never having signed up before to them, you can have a free trial. The programme on there for doing your tree is so easy. Also they will allow you to pay monthly, as and when if you want to. They are very accommodating.

I am sure that once your wife gets into Genealogy more she will become addicted like a lot of us who appear on this part of Yahoo answers. She will then want to be signed up to one site or another for checking out dates, certificates, and other information more and more as she gets engrossed with the ever enlarging family tree.

I would think it would be in your yard. LOL