SPAM in the Software forum: identity revealed?

Jeez, these "how to rip DVDs on a Mac" threads are really annoying.

I sent this email to one of the companies being promoted this way:

Someone is promoting your product on inappropriate forums. From a marketing perspective this is a terrible gaff, as it presents your product in a bad light. Please tell them to stop it. There are now thousands of readers of my favorite forum (Cakewalk SONAR users) that will not ever consider buying your software because of this.

You might want to do the same. The email address is sales@ifunia.com

Turnabout's fair play, I say.

Might be even more fun to ask them serious questions, like "is pirating Kung Fu Panda only legal in China, or can I also do it here in _________?"

So your plan is to get everyone to give their e-mail addresses to a spamming company?

Hmmm, what could possibly go wrong?

Drew, don't you have a special hotmail address just for messing with spammers? Everybody should have one.

bitflipper


Drew, don't you have a special hotmail address just for messing with spammers? Everybody should have one.

Yup! I thought everyone did too. Helps out in so many situations, trying out new online services or sites and even signing up for contests.

This guy who's been spamming us for crappy Mac video software is quite prolific. It's not a spambot, but a live human who's paid to do this. Must be a full-time job. Google one of his screen names and you'll get a couple pages of hits within hours of seeing his latest spam posting here.

He's been a topic on a forum frequented by forum admins. The consensus seems to be that there is no way to keep out a determined human spammer. Even forums that require email confirmation have been infected by these a-holes.

BTW, if you're thinking about downloading one of these products, think again. You will almost certainly be infecting your computer with adware, spyware or a virus. The same company will also sell you weight-loss products, fake Viagra, or make a payday loan. (That link is not to aiseesoft, it's safe.) Aiseesoft (or ifunia) is NOT a software developer. They're selling other people's applications. There is apparently another, perhaps legit company called Aieesoft.

The link in the current spam posting is to 92.242.144.10. That's a RIPE address, so I checked their database and this IP belongs not to someone in China as you might think, but to a company in London!

Specifically,

 Barefruit Ltd.
 Lindsay Dean
 43 - 45 Charlotte Street
 London W1T 1RS
 United Kingdom

Barefruit is not a fruit wholesaler. According to their website, "Barefruit generates highly targeted traffic for ISPs by replacing DNS and HTTP errors with relevant advertising." IOW, if you mis-type a URL they intercept it and show a related advertisement.

Perhaps Barefruit also runs some questionable sideline businesses that they don't advertise online. Think it's a coincidence that the spammer is "Aiseesoft", just one character different from the legit "Aieesoft", and Barefruit's business is all about capitalizing on user mis-spellings?

There is a similar poster flooding the Dell users forum with garbage.  Dell removes it but they are soon back under a new user name.  They have blocked certain address ranges and that has helped to eliminate some and some others they have set so any postings they do are "invisible" to everyone except the person that posted it. 

It would be clever of them if the spam threads were at all relevant, e.g. not Mac video on a Windows audio forum. But these guys post everywhere. When I googled his latest handle, his posts showed up on a forum dedicated to Indian television shows and another about skateboarding.

OK, so "television" is related to video, and skateboarders like to video themselves while proving Darwin was right. So there's some vague relevance. But I think they just scan for forums and arrogantly insinuate themselves in all of them, under the misguided assumption that all publicity is good.

I just hope there is a special place in hell for these scumbags. I really do.

Thanks for the sleuthing Bit - all very interesting at the very least and potentially helpful.

The secondary contact information was in Ireland, so you may be right about the London address just being a front.

Brandon, other forums have the ability to sequester posts with admin-defined keywords. Does ASPPlayground not offer this functionality?

43 - 45 Charlotte Street   
London W1T 1RS   
United Kingdom

Link to StreetView

To have four or six reliable users here with the ability to instantly remove spam from the forum to a holding folder for the staff to check, this would be a cleaner and harder place for them to conduct their business. Choosing the "civilian enforcers" would be as easy as looking to see who is reporting the spam. The admin staff knows who we are.

Exactly what I've been saying for years. That's how many other forums do it. On most of the sites I frequent, when spam appears it's gone within minutes.

The spam brigade wouldn't need to be general admins. All they'd need is the ability to move threads into a quarantine area, where the real admins could later examine and delete them at their convenience.