Possible Spam/Virus Site Using Your Name...

[pandaking]

Hi,

Not sure if I've picked the best forum for this but I came across a bit of advertising which had me a little puzzled today.
Firstly, it got me puzzled, because I had never seen VLC advertised before - especially through an advirtisment site such as adbrite, but low and behold this is what I saw: http://b1.adbrite.com/iads/389099.jpg


This is being advertised through the company adbrite. What got me even more confused was the website the banner linked to:
http://vlcdownload.net

I knew this wasn't the same site as we're on now, and I had used in the past. What was the final straw for me was the download link offered:
http://preview.licenseacquisition.org/4 ... -win32.exe

Now I've always seen your download links going from your own servers, I guess so you can track downloads etc.

I don't know, perhaps I've got the wrong end of the stick - but it looks to me like somebody is using your good name to trick people into downloading a virus or something and thought I would give you a heads up. You can normally email in to places like adbrite and ask them to take down a certain bit of advertising, and you have the image url above of which needs taking down.

Hope I haven't got this all wrong...

[3breadt]

Very strange, usually these sites link to an installer bundled with adware or viruses. But I downloaded the file and compared it to the official one, they are the same. So no virus there.

But they use images whose copyright they do not own and in other forums I read that that site licenseacquistion.org actually belongs to the Zango company who is known for spreading adware and stuff.

[pandaking]

Very strange, usually these sites link to an installer bundled with adware or viruses. But I downloaded the file and compared it to the official one, they are the same. So no virus there.

But they use images whose copyright they do not own and in other forums I read that that site licenseacquistion.org actually belongs to the Zango company who is known for spreading adware and stuff.

Hrm that is strange, I did hear that some virri sites like this change the links if you weren't directed to the page from an advert so it seems the link is valid unless you get directed there by the advert in which case it gives you infected link.

There is an odd .js file being loaded on that page, but it's been compressed so I'm struggling to work out what it does exactly...
http://static.pinballpublishernetwork.c ... /gpl_lp.js
Looks to me as advertising more than anything though, perhaps they are just using the VLC name to get money through adverts...

EDIT:
Well http://pinballpublishernetwork.com/faq/general says it's for installing a toolbar on peoples computers.

[robnich]

My wife was just fooled into downloading the package on this site, because it has placed a Google Ad for the keyword "vlc". She downloaded it and found it installing "Hotbar". The only reason she noticed was that the installer froze while installing Hotbar.

It seems that this site fooled you by not including Hotbar in the beginning, or using a method to selectively include it. I've reported this to Google AdWords, but I'm not sure that they are actually violating Google's TOS or AdWords policies. I've also reported it to Google as a malware site.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

My wife was just fooled into downloading the package on this site, because it has placed a Google Ad for the keyword "vlc". She downloaded it and found it installing "Hotbar". The only reason she noticed was that the installer froze while installing Hotbar.

It seems that this site fooled you by not including Hotbar in the beginning, or using a method to selectively include it. I've reported this to Google AdWords, but I'm not sure that they are actually violating Google's TOS or AdWords policies. I've also reported it to Google as a malware site.

Google doesn't care, since it makes them some money!

[Dano2k3]

Hope i can save others trouble about Hotbar. I came across this page:

http://www.fbmsoftware.com/spyware-net/ ... on/HotBar/

Sure seems Hotbar is crap, and we should all avoid it.

On a related by separate issue, in spirit doesn't this go against the GNU software license? Ok, sure they didn't "alter" VLC, but they are using it to attract people to install their spyware on there machine with the intention of altering a normal VLC installation...? So a person is not getting VLC, but VLC + spyware... So in "spirit" they have altered the normal installation of VLC?

Best regards,

dan d:)