Meaning of suffix in ROMS?

[SydL]

Hi everyone! I'm brand and shiny new to emulation – in my case on my Android – and I was browsing through ROMS here (mostly DS) and was wondering what the different names that are added as a suffix in brackets, e.g.: (XenoPhobia), (Legacy), etc. here mean. I presume they are releases by certain groups/people, but is there anything else to it, difference in quality, etc? Forgive me if this is a silly question and I did try to look in the forums before posting.

PS: I'm not talking about the commonly used ones like (U) for USA or (E) for Europe, I already know what those mean .

Bonus question: How safe is it to download a ROM? After many days of research, I’ve gleaned that ROMS are usually virus-free and safe to download as they usually aren’t executable (in the case of NDS, ISO, etc.) but one must be careful with emulator/shady-site downloads. Is this an accurate picture? And what precautions can I take henceforth?

Thanks everyone and looking forward to spending more time here!

[Ragnar]

The names in brackets are indeed the scene groups that released the games onto the net. There shouldn't be any quality difference amongst them, but there have been exceptions. Like as a completely random example, Bahamut was really quick to get a hot new game out the door, but Playasia looked at the game a month later and noticed Bahamut released a bad rip. When something like that happens the scene "nukes" the bad version, and everybody should move onto distributing the good one. Usually when something like that happens they'll add more tags that say something like (Proper) or whatever.

It's entirely safe to download a rom. As you said, they aren't executable so they don't actually do anything.
Sometimes you'll download a rom off some random site that's trying to be too user friendly, and you'll download a rom in a self-extracting .exe archive. That's something to be extremely wary of, it could do anything even if it does seem to extract the correct file to your desktop. With one of those you can change it's extension to .rar or .zip, and browse it's contents like you would any archived file. If you see something you don't like in the archive, just don't extract it. An archived virus really poses zero threat when all packed up, so don't worry if you happen to see one

[SydL]

I could not have hoped for a better reply! Thank you for your help and the comprehensive information you provided. I really appreciate it!

With people like you in the forum, it's an honour to be a part of it! Happy gaming to all of us, then!