Monday, June 29, 2009

Beware softonic scam.

I generally like to read reviews of my software. Reviews, critique, and user comments often provide important insights on the game, and I always look for the bug reports.

Today I found something unexpected tho. A 'positive' review where reviewer ('Softonic') tries to sell 'fast, virus free' download of polynomial::preview free. Without my permission. Wow. I found it flattering in a way, but not amusing. Others did, too.
Softonic offers 'free download' link, but how! With an non-apparent extra delay script[as to make 'slow download' indeed slow], they show a hotlink to a zip archive hosted by me. No permission was ever given to do any of that. And of course, softonic is a rather successful business (multimillion) from what I can see.
[if you want to see this crap, search for 'polynomial demo' in google. By the way, many other top finds neglect to link my website. This is no good. Those sites are also most likely to be linked. PageRank has severe problem in that PageRank itself influences it's input, creating a feedback loop]

edit: shortened to fit the blog style.

9 comments:

  1. Wow, those guys are dicks. I'll send the boys round.

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  2. So they give you viruses?

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  3. Well they're trying to imply that original download isn't fast or virus free whereas in reality its their download which is lot more likely to contain viruses or spyware.

    After I contacted them they removed their paid download link. Basically, softonic is a business mostly selling free software (demos, opensource, etc) for money without any permissions.

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  4. TO me it looks more that they sell fast, virus-free downloads, but make it look like a premium filedownload site that will offer all software with license they have. dumb users will assume, unlock code for softtonic will unlock their download to full download.

    those website should be taken down and owners sent to prison.

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  5. typo: i mean 'unlock to full version'

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