Apparently there were at least four other folks up already this morning.
The post disappeared while I was looking at the website. I didn’t see any harm in them, they were free. I went ahead and bookmarked the site with all of the manuals listed. I didn’t download any of them, but I did browse the selection. It looked like there was a very complete list, from Acura to Volvo. If I ever find myself working on a Citroen, I have access to a manual. I’m glad I caught the link while it was still up, and before your plea for four other flags was granted.
If it’s FREE, where is the advertising? If Freddist were making a buck, I’d say dump it. Since he wasn’t, where’s the harm? Will any of us lose business to an individual who is armed with a free repair manual?
Yes, it’s true: the discussion rules do not permit advertising. And I’ll take the blame for removing the two posts, because my one flag removes things automatically. I understand that advertising isn’t a nefarious force and people aren’t always pushing snake oil, but I removed these in the name of consistency.
Aside from being against this forum rules, when someone goes around the net creating posts advertising a site, something is suspect. Cartalk isn’t the only site that Freddist posted on.
Firefox, for example, raises flags against that site, saying its blocks content because that site asks to download code to track your online activity. [Update: Other sites do that as well, so it’s not clear if cardiagn.com is more suspect than others].
MG, Freddist registered at 2:40 AM and started posting about the manuals about 2:54. The actual text of the discussion rules is “Feel free to share your ideas and experiences about relevant products or services you’ve discovered. But the Car Talk Community is not a place for advertising, promotion, recruiting, campaigning, lobbying, soliciting or proselytizing.” Based on that set of facts, in my eyes Freddist registered for advertising and promotion purposes, so I removed it.
If it's FREE, where is the advertising? If Freddist were making a buck, I'd say dump it.
Those websites make money through advertising. They also PAY people to post in forums so people will go to those websites. Personally I don’t like spam…
I looked a the website and could not find any PDF’s to actually download.
There were just descriptions.
Edit: some of the manuals have a download button, but they take you to a suspicious looking Russian(?) website.
some of the manuals have a download button, but they take you to a suspicious looking Russian(?) website.
That’s a good catch. When I look at various “Free Manuals” links that Freddist recently posted around the web, I see some where he has “.pdf” file links that are really links to a website location and not a pdf document.
Update: I just jumped on a desktop I don’t care about and went back to the site that Freddist pointed us at (cardiagn.com). I tried to download various repair manuals. There is no free manual on that site at all. Every link for a free manual kept looping me around to more pages of useless information with lots of ads.
The other thing you have to watch out for is Viruses. Never download anything unless it’s a trusted website. It’s extremely easy to install a virus. There are nefarious websites that when you click on anything it downloads a virus. The virus is designed to encrypt everything on your computer and then forcing you to pay a ransom to decrypt it. Some as high as $2000.
^^^ MikeInNH:
Good point. I definitely worry about those viruses. Which is why I visited the Freddist’s site on system whose contents I didn’t care about.
You can check out suspicious programs & websites by using a virtual machine. VMware is a good one.
This is an isolated operating system that resides in a separate folder.
If you blow it up just start over with a fresh copy.
I run a virtual XP machine on Win 7 & 10 machines to run old programs.
You can check out suspicious programs & websites by using a virtual machine. VMware is a good one.
This is an isolated operating system that resides in a separate folder.
VM’s are a great way to filter any problems. And if there is a virus…it only effects the VM. And all you have to do is spin up another VM. The problem with that approach is that it’s way beyond the capabilities of most people who surf the web. You also need dedicated amount of disk space and menory for the VM. If you have a 2g system…probably not a good choice for a VM.
Get a good protector like Norton. It’ll block most viruses. But still have to be careful.
OK folks, I stand corrected and have deleted the link from my bookmarks. I guess I’m just “computer naive” enough to believe that I can get something for nothing.
