The anatomy of a widget pt 2: are widgets safe?

Why use widgets on a social site?
There's a simple anwser to that question: why not?

widgets are easy to add and a fun/useful element for the user and the profile's visitors.

however there's is a dark side to widgets, they can be used for virus distribution.
such as adding a link to a viral website in the widget.
but with simple reasoning skills you should be able to reconize those viral widgets( they often use the same format as viral email's, such as click here to win a prize, or find out who has a crush on you). and dont just go click every link you encounter.

but despite the few viral widgets dont be discouraged to use them, there's alot of usefull and/or fun widgets, the amount of diffrent widgets out there is big, and the amount of normal safe widgets outnumbers the viral one's.

to anwser the question are widgets safe?
well basicly there as safe as most of the other thing's on the internet.
so you should be safe.
like going to a viral site , using viral widgets can/will infect your computer.

so in short, dont go clicking on links or downloading files, without thinking/researching first, a quickly made decision leads to a quick demise.
and always have a good up-to-date virus scanner on your pc(you should have that already i hope.)