The software awards scam

[Humpty]

I put out a new product a couple of weeks ago. This new product has so far won 16 different awards and recommendations from software download sites. Some of them even emailed me messages of encouragement such as ?Great job, we?re really impressed!?. I should be delighted at this recognition of the quality of my software, except that the ?software? doesn?t even run.

 

This is hardly surprising when you consider that it is just a text file with the words ?this program does nothing at all? repeated a few times and then renamed as an .exe. The PAD file that described the software contains the description ?This program does nothing at all?.

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[JDPower]

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Not really surprised, I've thought this was the case for a while now. Good to see someone proving it so blatantly though

[Andavari]

I wouldn't be surprised if some of those so-called "awards" are based on the amount of downloads a file gets. It just shows that there's allot of download sites with somebody snoozing on the job.

[rridgely]

I haven't even seen the sites those awards came from before. I just stick to the following:

Snapfiles

Filehippo

Fileforum

Softpedia(rare. The site is ugly and hard to find good stuff)

Download.com(same as softpedia but worse)

[DennisD]

I've noticed over the months two seemingly distinct "camps" of award givers.

 

The recognizable ones you see on good download locations, and the others, the totally unrecognizable ones you come across on dodgy sites.

 

In fact it's so obvious when you see those unknown award givers, their presence is actually a warning to tread carefully.