On 8/2/2012 11:31 AM, Rob Weir wrote:
On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 11:50 AM, David H. Lipman<[email protected]> wrote:
From: "Anastasia Cher"<[email protected]>
Hello there,
I didn't know where to email, so I decided to just email to you. I just
want to tell that there is an issue, some website
www.*openoffice*.fm/suitepretends that its you. When I googled Open
Office it was the first website
in research so I just clicked and downloaded what they offered. The say
that it's an Open Office suit. When I finished and installed it, I had
lots
of bugs and staff but no office. So I don't know, but these guys are using
your name for scam.
This is going on for numerous software from Adobe Reader to VLC Media
Player.
Right. This is how it seems to work:
1) They buy advertisements on Google and Bing and spam social
networks, offering OpenOffice,Free Office and similar keywords. These
lure users into going to their page.
2) The pick URL's and brand the site in a way that makes it look official.
3) To download OpenOffice you need to use their special "downloader"
tool. The main purpose of the downloader tool is to install other
unrelated applications onto your system. It may or may not then
install OpenOffice.
4) These other applications are sponsored apps, meaning another
company is paying for these applications to be promoted. That is the
source of revenue for the websites that do this.
I did a blog post on this:
http://blogs.apache.org/OOo/entry/how_to_safely_download_apache
Note: Users are not powerless. There are places to report such
issues. Some are listed in the blog post.
Regards,
-Rob
Users aren't powerless, but too many of them just don't pay attention.
I pulled up your blog post to see if you addressed the easiest "clue" --
for me, anyway -- the URL itself and I see you do mention it, but maybe
it could be more directly stated.
*Any* URL that ends in a dot other than COM or ORG or NET should be
suspect and probably shouldn't be clicked on at all. The ".fm" in the
URL the poster provided is a dead giveaway. Most of your suggestions of
things to watch out for require the user to actually visit the page
first, and too many times it's already too late after that's been done.
It always frustrates me that in these "modern times" so much time is
spent cleaning up messes in the wake of these unethical people --
thieves and liars. I have no use for them.
For instance, I'm sure it took you a fair bit of time to write that blog
post -- which is very helpful. Unfortunately, I would guess that a vast
majority of the people who need that knowledge won't find it until
*after* they've been screwed and go to try to find out why.
Tam
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