Named & Shamed

DVD Videosoft Free Youtube Download

I’ve made it my mission to help rid the world of junk, so I’m not about to fill up my hard drive with lots of online videos, when I can easily stream them instead. That said, I can see how a Youtube downloader might come in handy, particularly if your internet connection is unreliable, or you want to watch clips offline.

Sidestepping the legal greyness of this whole area, what’s really depressing about Youtube downloaders is that most of them are rubbish (you’ll find an exception on page 52). And, if you’re really unlucky, you’ll end up with one like Dvdvideosoft Free Youtube Download ( www.snipca.com/29369), which contaminates your PC with even more junk and continually spams you with messages.

Search online for ‘free Youtube downloader’ and Dvdvideosoft’s tool appears near the top of the results. The program’s website makes the boldly unfounded claim that it’s “the most popular Youtube downloader application”. But don’t let any of this fool you. Install it on your PC and a separate program called Dvdvideosoft Free Studio is added without your say-so. This turns out to be a collection of shortcuts to other Dvdvideosoft tools, cunningly providing a way to add yet more junk to your PC.

If that wasn’t irritating enough, the program artificially throttles the download speed of videos to a comically absurd degree. It took me nearly 19 minutes to download a four- minute clip over a fast 80Mbps fibre broadband connection (see proof of this in our screenshot).

The software’s developers also realise this is excruciatingly slow, which is why they helpfully remind you to upgrade to the Premium version (which costs up to £76) via a constant barrage of pop-ups. They are the final cherry on this inedible slice of junk cake.