Beware of Free themes: It might be a Word­Press Malware

What is Malware?

Malicious software, or mal­ware, is soft­ware designed to secretly access a com­puter sys­tem with­out the owner’s informed con­sent. The expres­sion is a gen­eral term used by com­puter pro­fes­sion­als to mean a vari­ety of forms of hos­tile, intru­sive, or annoy­ing soft­ware or pro­gram code.

Yes they are every­where. From plu­g­ins to themes in Word­Press. The most recent was a plu­gin called Blog­Press SEO.

The most insid­i­ous form is in a free Word­Press theme.

Now that doesn’t mean every­thing that’s free is bad. Some­times even things that you paid for are even worse.

The old adage: “Too good to be true”, plays out in the inter­net world as well.

Here’s an excel­lent expla­na­tion of how spam­mers use Word­Press theme to spread their malware.

How do you avoid get­ting Word­Press Theme malware

• Always get free theme from WordPress.org Theme Repos­i­tory.
• Key-in the theme name in Google Search.
• Read blogs on WordPress.
• Use Pre­mium themes.

When you see a free theme, get the theme name and search for it in Google. If the theme is a paid theme and you can get it free from another web­site, that’s a red flag.

It’s not a bar­gain. And don’t even think of check­ing the code. There are thou­sand of lines of codes. You’ll most likely miss some lines.

It’s still cheaper to pay for the theme.

Here’s a video explain­ing why you shouldn’t look for free themes on Google.