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General discussion

***SCAM*** Software download web sites. Beware!

Mar 12, 2010 5:50AM PST

The internet being what it is, generally and often unregulated, there is little to prevent scammers from "setting up shop" with their own web sites and offer unbelievably cheap downloads of recognised software.

That Unbelievable is usually the clue. Such software, if it exists at all on these sites, is usually pirated. More often than not the software does not exist and when you provide your credit card details you find that a debit has been made on your account, but you have not been able to download the software. At worse, the scammers have your credit card details, and can withdraw your money at will.

These scam site attempt to foll visitors into believing that they have accreditation by adding images/logos to their pages for leading sites like CNET, Adobe, Microsoft, etc. But such accreditation does not exist, and those logos are just images, and are not clickable links to the parent web site.

While genuine web sites like CNET, Adobe, Microsoft, Verisign and so on take active steps to stop these sites once they become known, there is very little that can be done to prevent new ones from appearing.

That is what this Sticky discussion is about.

If you come across such a suspicious site, post details here with a {broken} link, eg http :// www.scam site.com . The two spaces in the web site address will make it non-clickable.

In addition, make the subject tile of your post include the web site, eg Is http://www.scamsite.com a scam site?

That way, the post will eventually be listed in Google, and that makes the post and this discussion available for any others who may be researching that web site.

If we find or decide that the web site is genuine, then we will delete the post to avoid problems for that web site, so please use caution in your postings, and if you are not sure, do not add the web site to the Subject title.

I will start this off;

Mark

Discussion is locked

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Nice work!
Apr 14, 2011 4:55AM PDT

That's good work. I have rated both with WOT, (Web of Trust), my Firefox browser web security add-on so hopefully others will know.

Same office building, same FAQ, essentially. I wonder how many other siblings there are.

Looks like another trip to the station.

It's good to know they took the details before. Many local police stations wouldn't really know where to start with such a report. I assume there is some sort of national organisation in France that deals with internet piracy and thieves?

Mark

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Re: http://main-downloads.net
May 19, 2011 7:12AM PDT

As of this writing, May 19, 2011, they have cloned themselves once again as

www,software-reseller,net.

Same building, same scam, etc.

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You're right,
May 19, 2011 8:57PM PDT
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OEM Software scam
May 26, 2011 2:56PM PDT

Check the link below. You'll see that there are 149 sites on the same server. 29 of them have registered complaints for OEM Software scams. I have seen several of these recently including softwareninjas.com and softmary.com... many others.
The balance of the info is as you stated regarding registered owner of site etc. Go get 'em!

http://www.malwareurl.com/listing.php?domain=maindownloads.com

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Is downloadweb.org a scam site
May 11, 2011 5:21PM PDT

I think downloadweb .org is a scamsite.

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Ouch! Good find
May 11, 2011 8:37PM PDT
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Is http:// www . buymsoffice2007.com/index.php a SCAM?
May 23, 2011 8:48PM PDT

http: // www.buymsoffice2007.com/index.php

Web Page Header shows "Microsoft Store", but it is not an affiliate of Microsoft.

This site was spammed by http://www.cnet.com/profile/ppaker/ 3 times yesterday in these forums. He has now been banned.

The site itself says it provides Office software as well as Windows 7 at ridiculously low prices. That alone makes the web site suspect.

But then, the web site has no About Us, no FAQ, no Privacy Notice, despite saying they do, no Return Policy, despite...!

They do have an email address, 527052603 @ qq.com. Yeah, right.

A Whois lookup shows this site is based in China;
http://who.is/whois/buymsoffice2007.com/

I'm calling this a scam web site, Purchase AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Mark

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I am so enraged I feel
May 25, 2011 12:43PM PDT

Like posting my rage on this blog. Seriously, I am very upset with what many of you have said as my opinion is dramatically different than yours, so much so, that I'm infuriated you feel so DIFFERENTLY. If there's one thing I learned from my years of being a regular, non-fat cat who has responsibilities and doesn't just post things on blogs, it's that what the user above said is not only an affront to my politics, but morality on a global scale.

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Obama.
May 25, 2011 8:04PM PDT

I didn't realise that President Obama was involved in these scam web sites as well. May be he should be impeached?

Other than that, I have no idea what you are talking about.

Care to explain more? Or shall I just delete your post as being non-relevant to the topic?

Mark

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softsupreme.net, business-download.com, luxury-customers.net
Aug 2, 2011 6:57AM PDT

You already had something on softsupreme.net, but not these other sites. I purchased software under business-download.com which had no posts or comments on it, appeared to be hosting company in Europe so I thought it was OK (even had multi-national version, etc). Serial #s given, all bogus and not authorized. No reponse on refund request so I have also reported as fraud to my CC issuer. Also, beware emails are coming from bestbuymailer.net, bestbuymailer.com - so that is probably going to be the next website they use.

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Also beware soft4each.net
Aug 2, 2011 8:08AM PDT

I'm just researching things further, it appears that all of the sites above are also related to another earlier post for http:// main-downloads.net, just notice that it is only the company name at the top that changed from SoftSupreme to Quality Software. My credit card got billed by Soft4each.net which has a different web appearance and appears to be for smaller ticket items, but clearly the same people, same top menu bar, with identical comments about oem software.

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Softsupreme
Aug 5, 2011 8:59AM PDT