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#178 December, 2005
Recent discussions in the user group forum and other places online ask the question:
> I see these amazing deals on
>
software! Are they for real?
>
Has anyone bought any of that software?
Of course, the old adage :
"If it looks too good to be true, it probably is"
does hold true in this case.
Following those discussions, I decided to track some of these posts and see where they would take me. No, I didn't buy. But I did go so far as to chase them to their online commerce -- and contact some of the manufacturers to see what they would say.
Yes, all the ones I checked are indeed online scams -- in the truest sense of the term. let's take a look...
One particularly prolific dealster sends spam almost every day to several of our spam-trap email addresses. We tracked this one because they commit several unpardonable crimes -- yet could easily be confused as the real thing by the uninitiated.
They steal from others: in order to be convincing, this crook has stolen graphics and pitch from Amazon.com. They count on people confusing this with an Amazon ad. They actually embed these graphics in the spam, and any unwary users who are using HTML preview in their email will see this image.. But that's not all, they also steal from the manufacturers.
They're beyond U.S. borders: If you're like me you get just a little nervous if a firm wants your VISA card number. But you get even more nervous when the firm is located outside of the U.S. How do we know?
If you look at the code, or have html turned off, the thieves can't hide. We see this particular scam is advertising http://williamkidsoft.com/. A quick trip to the GeekTools Whois page shows us the site is registered to a crook in TAHITI -- one Alex Rodrigez, Pirae FP TAHITI 98716. . (Except in cases like this, you can bet it's false.) We also see that it's registered by "GoDaddy" -- and now we KNOW it's false since GoDaddy allows falsified registrations. Of course the email is always from a forged identity and address.
Established yesterday: Another tell-tale sign is if the vendor just set up shop, or changes shop frequently. We've tracked this one through several reincarnations. Williamkidsoft.com had been registered just days when the spam from them started -- 14th of December, 2005. Within a week or so, the very same spam, (same offer, same graphics, virtually identical) began appearing from a different domain. Nothing in the ad changed except the links. This time it goes to OEMFestival.com, registered on January 4th, 2006. Both domains however do go to the exact same web site. But this time the registrant is William Esther, Biz4less Enterprises Ltd., 13865 Tahiti Way, Venice CA 90292. Also probably false. Frequent shifting is clear indication they've been shut down, or they're eluding detection.
* Follow-up: This is my Spamcop software scams screen for the first 8-hours of Jan 10. All the same offer, all different email addresses, all resolve to the same ecommerce page.
The above three attributes not only point to a scam to grab your money and run, or ship out some pirated software -- but also represent more than one felony committed.
To see what the industry thinks, we selected one of the products -- Adobe Creative Suite. . . here's the way the ad read:
> Adobe Photoshop CS2 V 9.0 by Adobe
>
ListPrice: $599.00 -- OurPrice: $69.95
>
YouSave: $529.05 (88%)
>
Availability: Available for INSTANT download!
>
Sales Rank: #3
>
Average Customer Review:
>
(based on 40 reviews)
We contacted Adobe to get their take on the ad. A spokesman for Adobe said flatly:
> There is NO legal Adobe Software
> that can be downloaded online unless
> it is directly from the
> Adobe web site, www.adobe.com. Period.
Today's lesson:
*
Check and validate who is making the offer
*
If they're stealing from others, they'll steal from you
*
If it looks too good to be true... it probably is.
*
Protect yourself because no one else will.
I've reported a total of 80 of these to the registrars, hosts and manufacturers, beginning in early December. Obviously, no one cares because the crook is allowed to continue scamming people.
Thanks for reading...
Editor: DTG Magazine and 60-Second Windows contact me!
In case you're really curious, I've included the actual scam here for all to see.
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