Background: I recently decided to pay for all my software, after the hacking issues that plagued my PC made the concept of "nothing in life is free" take on new meaning. Not to mention the fact that software developers need to get paid too, and I have always considered stealing wrong -- only that morality didn't seem to cover digital media. Go figure. However, I've had a financial crisis of late, and really wanted to replace the truly awful SierraWatcher software for Mac OS X (it connects my laptop to the internet via my AT&T AirCard 875U) with something better, and AT&T (nee Cingular) doesn't support Macs, so their superior software is unavailable to me. My only option seems to be a program called launch2net, made by a finnish company I believe, and I tried a trial and it's way superior to SierraWatcher. Yet maybe it's the exchange rate, but it costs 75 euros, currently $106 USD, and I don't think you'll find anyone out there arguing that a modem dialing piece of software is worth that much. $25 maybe... but over $100? Give me a break. So I had a slip in my "no pirated software" philosophy and did a Google search for "launch2net warez" which resulted in a site with an incredible scam.
The Scam: The site, dollarwarez.com, claims you can pay $1 to get access to the site by buying a 3-day trial membership to any of its porn affiliates, which costs only $1, natch. Make a successful purchase and return to dollarwarez and enter the code you're provided by the porn affiliate to get access. Only, the code doesn't work. The email address on the site for support doesn't work. You've just been screwed, and dollarwarez has made a big profit off you by the payment the porn affiliate will send them for signing up a new customer. What's worse, if you forget to cancel your three-day trial membership (and a high percentage of people probably do), then your credit card will be billed monthly every month until cancellation, which results in a perpetual payout for dollarwarez for operating a bogus site. Of course, you (or I, whatever) surfed there looking for free (illegal) software warez downloads, so who's going to call the BBB on them? It's a scam that works because the scammed party (in this case myself) basically "deserved" it. Still, they're scum. Be warned.Guess I'll have to settle for using the sucky SierraWatcher for Mac OS X for the time being, until the guys who make launch2net learn how to price competitively.
5 comments:
Don feel too bad. I just got scammed by an outfit called Warezaccess.com for the same reasons you mentioned. Difference is they got me for $2.87 instead of your $1.00. Same thing you said. Register through an Adult site processor, get a subscription number and then go back to generate your login id. Same as with you, the subscriber number is invalid and I've just been scammed.
There is no free lunch and a lot of crooks out to prove it.
warezaccess.com = scam
I believe this scam outfit is also operating under the name warez-portalz. The odd thing is it looks like a genuine site selling software on the cheap. I even checked McAfee and their site gives them the all clear. BE WARNED! You will not receive any return email after you pay and you will be locked out of their support page. I lost around $11 from this outfit. Luckily I always use a prepaid credit card online, and spent the remainder of my credit on a DVD. So if they try to take more money or buy something using my account, they will not have much luck.
Thanks for sharing!!! I love your complete honesty. Hopefully you will save lots of people from wasting their cash!
warezaccess.com is still on the air with their scam. Search for something bogus and it will "find" all kinds of hits.
-Mike
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