Beware of free trials and tool bars

It is understandable that businesses like to pitch their products and services by offering free trials. However, how they try to do it is often questionable. You must read the instructions carefully when installing a program and decline free trials and similar offers unless you really want them.  

It is often much harder to remove them once the free trial is over.  In one case, I had to obtain a special removal tool from the manufacturer's web site to remove the free software after its trial period.  In another case, the manufacturer could not help and simply said that I would have to either contact the operating system vendor for assistance or restore my system to a previous restore point.