Wednesday, 2 January 2008

Suspicious Search Result for Free AVG

In the process of searching for AVG's site for the previous post, which is on the Grissoft.com Grisoft.com domain, we turned up the following result:

AVG Free Search Results

Note the link to "free-avgDOTorg" as the first result under the sponsored sites before Grissoft's Grisoft's site links.

After clicking on the free-avg link, one is presented with this site:

AVG Free Download

Note that the button includes the line to "Get Full Support" in it.

The following page is presented after clicking on the button and resides on a completely different domain - ordersignupDOTcom:

Sign Up: General Information

Note the now distinct absence of the AVG logo and software reference. Enter an email address and:

AVG - No where to be found

The orginal AVG .org domain is protected by Domains by Proxy. This in and of itself leads one to be really suspicious as the original owners of the domain cannot be contacted at all.

Go to the ordersignupDOTcom root page that is hosting the "Membership Type" page and one is lead on a wild goose chase that ends up on sites that also look like their sole purpose in life is to garner a person's credit card info.

All in all, this is one very good reason to be "street smart" on the Internet and for companies like Grissoft Grisoft to be aware of what others are doing with their online reputation.

UPDATE: Updated the spelling of Grisoft!

UPDATE 2: Courtesy of Alex over at the Sunbelt Blog: Anti-virus vendor AVG subpoenas information on counterfeiters.

My apologies to Grisoft for the inference above that they are not taking care of their reputation. It seems that they are, but as the article indicates, it is very difficult for them to follow through on it!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.
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2 comments:

  1. pbitton03 January, 2008 13:01

    Just wanted to say "thanks" to you and Alex for noting our efforts to protect users from fraudulent site operators - and of course we are not the only vendors being targeted by the bad guys (although having 60 million users probably makes us pretty attractive). There is sadly a growing number of people on the web who seek to take advantage of others less devious than they, and we want to take all possible steps to protect computer users against these criminals. Defending the integrity of the web is something we encourage everyone to do, so please contact us at legal at avg dot com if anyone reading this posting comes across other such sites.

    Pat Bitton
    GRISOFT

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  2. Philip Elder Cluster MVP04 January, 2008 07:56

    Pat,

    Thank you for the comment.

    We take great pains to educate our client's users on the ups and downs of using the Internet.

    Again, Grisoft Legal: Legal AT avg DOT com is the place to notify Grisoft of anything suspicious.

    There is no replacement for keeping one's eyes and ears open while on the Internet.

    Philip

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