hijack this name hijacked?

General Topics
1

Merijn has posted the following warning on his site, so be careful out there as everything might not be what it seems to be!

April22, 2005:
Just a short note on the domain HIJACK-THIS.NET: this is not mine! It has been registered by XoftSpy (who are also on the Rogue Antispyware List on SpywareWarrior.com) and they are luring people into downloading their software believing it is HijackThis. Also, they have registered a few AdWords at Google leading to the same result. I have contacted them about this and received no reply (how surprising). Google can’t do much about it since there is no copyright being breached. We’ll see where this goes.
In the meantime, if you want to download any of my programs, the official domain is and always will be www.merijn.org.

2

Thanks for the heads up - there are many who are advised to use HiJackThis on these forums. We normally give them a URL though.

3
April22, 2005: Just a short note on the domain HIJACK-THIS.NET: this is not mine! It has been registered by XoftSpy (who are also on the Rogue Antispyware List on SpywareWarrior.com) and they are luring people into downloading their software believing it is HijackThis. Also, they have registered a few AdWords at Google leading to the same result. I have contacted them about this and received no reply (how surprising). Google can't do much about it since there is no copyright being breached. We'll see where this goes. In the meantime, if you want to download any of my programs, the official domain is and always will be www.merijn.org.

Yes Thorny ! I forgot the address to merijn’s site and did a Google search: HiJackThis… & …Merijn. org . I ended up at HIJACK-THIS.NET, which didn’t seem right as they were advertising OnLine Gambling and Home shopping . :wink: wierd stuff ::slight_smile:

4

Just to add to the confusion, there’s hijackthis.de, which includes that handy auto-analyzer for logs. If I understand correctly, it’s legit but not officially sanctioned by Merijn, but it’s still quite useful for a “quick and dirty” idea of what you’ve got on your system.

5

Someting similar has happened to Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware. Just do a Google search: the sponsored ads which appear to the right are for products called Spybot and Ad-Ware, which, if you had heard something about the product but weren’t sure exactly what the name was, you could easily download by mistake.

Google seems to be quite happy to take the money from these scumbag parasites. Shame on you Google, shame!

6

Hi FreewheelinFrank,

Yes this is a confusing world the anti-spyware world. You always have to check programs if they are legit and not partly mal- or scumware. SpywareGuide.com is the place to check, add this search engine to your favorites, and whenever you feel the urge to download something, check it beforehand at SpywareGuide.com. The link where they can advice you against the wrong anti-spyware programs, and where they list all the wrongdoers or those that failed the ballot is: http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm
Keep an eye out. But like someone said at this forum, better safe than sorry.

Greets,

polonus

7

polonus :

Yes this is a confusing world the anti-spyware world. You always have to check programs if they are legit and not partly mal- or scumware. SpywareGuide.com is the place to check, add this search engine to your favorites, and whenever you feel the urge to download something, check it beforehand at SpywareGuide.com. The link where they can advice you against the wrong anti-spyware programs, and where they list all the wrongdoers or those that failed the ballot is: http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm Keep an eye out. But like someone said at this forum, better safe than sorry.
Great advice polonus ...the world of Spyare is almost as bad as the world of politics. ;)

I was interested to recieve a newsletter from Cnet/Download.com : They have noted there top 10 downloads are AD-AWARE SE, SPYBOT S&D,WINPATROL, etc. mainly anti-spyware products . They have vowed to check all there downloads as being valid “clean” programs, as it finally occured to them they are perpetuating the spreading of “SCUMWARE”, and people are downloading mainly to cure the mess they help create.

Whether they really will delete suspect programs for download is to be seen. I was kind of surprised to read this though, a step in the right direction I hope. :slight_smile:

I wish Merijn would copyright HiJackThis, he doesn’t get enough reward for creating this outstanding software! I’m not sure of the legal stuff, and the history behind it’s development, very intriguing . Maybe someone could enlighten me . ???

8

I once downloaded the latest Ad-aware SE from Download.com and didn’t have any problems. I detected no spywares nor any problems when I started scanning. Lavasoft rely on Download.com as thier holding server for Ad-aware SE.

9

Yes, sorry FIXER, I must have worded that wrongly. The majority of Download.com’s programs are legit. It’s the stuff at the bottom of the barrel they are concerned about . They’ve ascertained their top downloads are Anti-spyware suggesting, there’s a need to be concerned with what they are offering in other software areas .I generally download from their archives and subscribe to their newsletter.

10

Yeah, I normally just download the program from the website that acaully made it. But Lavasoft, I had to get from Download.com since Lavasoft didn’t put Ad-aware SE in thier own server.