[ale] Phishing Fraud selling Open Office

Robert Reese~ ale at sixit.com
Tue Dec 16 09:30:02 EST 2008


> This FRAUD showed up in my mailbox.
....
> Open Office 2009 - New & Improved
> Automatic free updates and customer support.


Yes, the time is rife with scam sites regarding openoffice.org who prey on 
people that do a search for "open office".  Unless people type DIRECTLY 
openoffice.org into the address bar, most of the sites that are popping up are 
scams trying to trick people into divulging their email addresses and other 
personal information before telling them they have to join a "membership" in 
order to access the "free download".  Part of the problem, however, is the 
naturla tendency now to simply type the address into the search bar and click on 
the site that "looks right".  That is asking for trouble with OOo.

We need to make sure we make it very, very clear to those folks we tell about 
openoffice.org to only go to the official site.... remember, its the same as the 
name!  Of course, another problem is the scam sites have purchased the terms for 
Google Ads on the search engine so they come up first on Google.

There is also something else we can do: Help create a page that can be linked to 
by sites, whereas the page explains the scams.  Hopefully enough good 
information and links tot he page will push the page to the top under 
openoffice.org to alert people of the scams and the bad Google Ads.  Perhaps 
this can be done on the Wiki?

Cheers,
Robert~



More information about the Ale mailing list