Bringing Down A Copycat Site 468
Nigel Cross wrote in with an interesting story from the world of software fraud. Cross writes "I found a copycat site fraudulently selling my own software and kept a record of the steps it took to bring him down."
A link to the copy cat site (Score:2, Interesting)
Google cache
Seems like he has alot of work to do (Score:4, Interesting)
Good luck buddy.
Doesn't anyone get the feeling that... (Score:2, Interesting)
- binoculars are used by stalkers?
- cars are used for drive-by shootings?
The fact that some products can be used for illegal purposes doesn't make producing the products wrong.
Every website wich collects e-mail adresses (so that's pretty much *every* website) has need for a tool to maintain their mailing list.
secure server? (Score:2, Interesting)
thats a nice and secure server if i must say myself. in one of the emails, he was specifically referring to being part of the esellerate affiliate program - if so, he should e using the esellerate e-commerce engine.. this guy smells danger everywhere, anyone who purchases software from this guy probably gets their credit card number stolen in addition to getting their email address added to the spamming lists (that he also sells)..
fun!
His effort was not enough (Score:5, Interesting)
--jeff++
Still more work to go (Score:5, Interesting)
Check it out:
http://www.e-buyonline.com/maillist.php [e-buyonline.com]
Re:MailList: Used by Spammers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is this karma? Well, maybe so. But two wrongs don't make a right. The proper way of dealing with this guy - if his program really is intended to aid spammers - is to make his software illegal or, better yet, convince him to stop writing and selling it. And even then, stealing and reselling the program is hardly an effective vigilante response!
Re:Spam software? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Step One: (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:His effort was not enough (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.e-buyonline.com/purchase.php and http://www.e-buyonline.com/mk.php still allows you to enter in credit card info to purchase the stolen program.
That's okay, the resulting slashdotting will kill it. :)
In all seriousness, this guy doesn't seem to be beyond the reach of US law. His hosting appears to be from Pakhost, who *tada* keeps their servers in Michigan and Texas.
Remember that DMCA thing we bitch about? Time to write a takedown notice [wikipedia.org] to the hosting company citing the infringing material in question. In addition, once you have collected that information, take a few extra minutes tracking down the legitimate owners of the other software on the site, explain what you did, and share that information.
[ If I'm wrong and his hosting company isn't in the US, a careful inspection of the online store reveals no validation of ording information other than a valid email address. A bitter, wronged coder could write a script to string together valid-looking names, locations, emails, and credit card numbers, then flood their ordering page. It appears that the order information is checked manually, so the above action would end up DOSing their ordering channel. Depending on your location, and the location of the server, this may be very, very illegal, and thus I don't advise it.]
Re:Step One: (Score:2, Interesting)
Overkill? (Score:5, Interesting)
okey I had remove the logo and the software completely.
And with that single line I had won. I checked his site and all references to our software were gone.
Boy that really showed him! I'm sorry but I don't think emailing someone and asking them to remove the software "otherwise you will complain to the hosting company" quite constitutes the phrase "steps it took to bring him down". I was hoping for a story of how you chartered a private bounty hunting squad of ex-navy SEALs and pursued him through the jungle while your software was tied to a site under threat of being sold - hell it would have been nice if he'd been sued for $50 but asking him to remove it? Come on - more like "steps it took to send an email asking him to remove it" may be more appropriate!
Make the bastards suffer!
Re:A Better Strategry (Score:1, Interesting)
R.
Toni Arts has a worse problem (Score:5, Interesting)
The 'Official' Toni Arts page now:
http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/index.h
and the unofficial 'ripped off' one:
http://www.toniarts.com/ [toniarts.com]
If ever a site needs removing, it's that one
Account Suspended Temporarily Due to AUP Violation (Score:2, Interesting)
Please contact abuse@pakhost.com for any questions.
Thank you for your cooperation!
Best Regards,
PakHost.com
it works;)
Re:You've got the details of the server ... (Score:1, Interesting)
SUMMARY
- Number of hosts which were alive during the test : 1
- Number of security holes found : 6
- Number of security warnings found : 4
- Number of security notes found : 11
he he he
Re:Step One: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd bet there are lots of them.
Slashdot has more users than that, based on UsedID numbers. Most Slashdot users, I suspect, have Slashdot send them a daily email with the Slashdot stories, and a signifigant number are bound to receive emails when someone replies to a message, as I do.
The NYTimes is bound to have that many people on their mailing list.
Google has their "Google Alerts" feature. Wouldn't surprise me if over 500,000 email addresses have signed up.
Not to mention an inhouse list used for testing purposes or something similar. 450K sounds incredibly *small* for a spam list.
Re:Step One: (Score:3, Interesting)
Just for a different view on it, I would venture to say that there are very few spam outfits out there that are only sending mail to 450K people (they are far more interesting in the 1-25M range).
Re:A Better Strategry (Score:3, Interesting)
You're an idiot (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, but how can you defend a guy that got burned by the same type of people that he caters his software for? He knew what he was getting himself into.
The guy sells mail list management software. He is nothing LIKE the people who burned him. He is no different than Brent Chapman (creator of MajorDomo) except for the fact that the latter made his product community supported, Free Software. What's next, are you gona slag Apache because is it by far the most popular HTTP server used by fraudulent websites?
This frauster "Mohammed" is the lowest form of slimeball life. He wasn't just another spammer or BitTorrent pirate:
* He not only pirated the software, he did it with the intention to resell the pirated copies for a profit.
* He misrepresented himself as the creator of the software.
* He had an online shopping site that accepted credit cards--given his behaviour he intended to use those card numbers fraudulently
* He attempted extortion (demanding money, credit card numbers, etc for removal of the fraudulent site)
The author of the article succeeded in getting the site taken down, but if he hasn't done so yet, I believe he has an obligation to report "Mohammed's" activities to the authorities, as his behaviour is seriously illegal.
P2P apps may have perceived damages to a few large corporations, but they do not affect every single used of the internet like spam.
That is an absoulutely false and stupid statement. P2P is JUST LIKE email in terms of impact on network infrasutructure: used properly it is fine, but when abused it can cripple a network. At the height of the old Napster it slowed the sustained throughput of local cable ISP customers very noticeably. It is the chief reason for slowdowns on campus networks as well--in fact in some cases abuse of P2P apps is the chief reason for implementing bandwidth caps. I personally know of one remote site with internet connectivity provided by a sattelite uplink that racked up THOUSANDS of dollars in one months of fees because of a SINGLE KAZAA USER that shared all her music and lef thte PC on 24/7. As a result P2P was banned entirely. Incidentally, that same site had a Win2K box compromised and used to deliver spam, and it actually had LESS IMPACT on network performance than the P2P software did.