Recently we learned of a supposed "cracks" for some of our products, including Pst Viewer Pro, and MsgViewer Pro, appearing on warez download websites. Beware of these cracks! They do not work, and we have confirmed that they are virus infected.
I know that's what you might expect a software publisher to say, but it is certainly true and we want to warn you. This happens to tens of thousand of software publishers each year. Criminals know that some people are looking for illegally "cracked" software, and they use this knowledge to infect computers with viruses and keyboard monitors.
Our team download and tested the purportedly cracked software (which actually is not MsgViewer Pro or Pst Viewer Pro), and found Trojan.Win32.Generic.pak!cobra, which is one of the most popular viruses in 2010, according to GFI. It infects both 32- and 64-bit Windows versions stealing the user's personal data. Other viruses our team found were Trojan.Generic.KD.67255, and Trojan.DownLoad2.18121.
We are of course very upset that our software would be used as bait to infect a potential customer's computer, even though that user sought out illegal copies of our software.
We have sent notices to hosting sites to demand they remove the software. Because these Warez sites pop up as quickly as they are shut down, it is very difficult to make progress. So now we focus our efforts on warning you directly.
How does this happen? It seems that these criminals will acquire a list of software products, then autogenerate thousands of web pages based on the list, hijacking trademarks, intending for them to be indexed in search engines. People searching for links to cracked software or free license keys are at risk of being lured. When they visit the warez website, they may be asked to pay $2 or some other small amount for the software, potentially handing their credit card information directly to the criminals.
When the user downloads and runs the software (which isn't actually MsgViewer Pro or Pst Viewer Pro at all), nothing will appear to happen. At that point, the computer is infected.
We wanted to bring this to your attention because, a) we are disturbed that this is happening, b) we don't want anyone to be infected by a fake crack of our software (even if they are trying to steal our work), and c) we want to let you know that we have taken precautions to ensure that our website and CNET Download.com and Snapfiles.com are the only websites were we directly monitor download our downloads.
If the search engines do their duty, hopefully this blog post will rise to the top of the "MsgViewer Pro crack" and "PST Viewer Crack" and "Encryptomatic Crack" search results and others may be warned.
I know that's what you might expect a software publisher to say, but it is certainly true and we want to warn you. This happens to tens of thousand of software publishers each year. Criminals know that some people are looking for illegally "cracked" software, and they use this knowledge to infect computers with viruses and keyboard monitors.
Download a Free Trial of Pst Viewer Pro Direct from the Publisher.
Our team download and tested the purportedly cracked software (which actually is not MsgViewer Pro or Pst Viewer Pro), and found Trojan.Win32.Generic.pak!cobra, which is one of the most popular viruses in 2010, according to GFI. It infects both 32- and 64-bit Windows versions stealing the user's personal data. Other viruses our team found were Trojan.Generic.KD.67255, and Trojan.DownLoad2.18121.
We are of course very upset that our software would be used as bait to infect a potential customer's computer, even though that user sought out illegal copies of our software.
We have sent notices to hosting sites to demand they remove the software. Because these Warez sites pop up as quickly as they are shut down, it is very difficult to make progress. So now we focus our efforts on warning you directly.
How does this happen? It seems that these criminals will acquire a list of software products, then autogenerate thousands of web pages based on the list, hijacking trademarks, intending for them to be indexed in search engines. People searching for links to cracked software or free license keys are at risk of being lured. When they visit the warez website, they may be asked to pay $2 or some other small amount for the software, potentially handing their credit card information directly to the criminals.
When the user downloads and runs the software (which isn't actually MsgViewer Pro or Pst Viewer Pro at all), nothing will appear to happen. At that point, the computer is infected.
We wanted to bring this to your attention because, a) we are disturbed that this is happening, b) we don't want anyone to be infected by a fake crack of our software (even if they are trying to steal our work), and c) we want to let you know that we have taken precautions to ensure that our website and CNET Download.com and Snapfiles.com are the only websites were we directly monitor download our downloads.
If the search engines do their duty, hopefully this blog post will rise to the top of the "MsgViewer Pro crack" and "PST Viewer Crack" and "Encryptomatic Crack" search results and others may be warned.
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