Results tagged “Zango” from SpywareGuide Greynets Blog

Well, here's the new version. It also makes no sense whatsoever, though it isn't quite as brain melting as the first.



"To quit and not install, click OK. To continue installing Zango and cancel this notice, click Cancel".

Awesome.

Should you install Zango, you won't get any free movie. You won't see the red hot boinky-boinky action you were promised.

What you will see, is this website promising to "burn your boredom":


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Amazingly - or not - New Moon is nowhere to be seen, and all of the "movies to watch" resolve to a URL that looks like this:

http:///#

As you might have guessed, you won't be watching any free movies anytime soon. The site above is Blemax.com, feel free to add it to your blocklists.

Oh, and don't be writing angry Twilight fan letters shouting at me because I said there'd be twelve films and how I'm slamming it without knowing the subject matter at hand. As everybody knows, there are four books, there will be four films, and they will all be terrible.

....I'm doing it again, aren't I?

Depending on which link you click (and there's quite a lot of them), you'll end up seeing something like this:


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Of course, you'll only see any content on the site if you agree to the Zango install.

The site in question here is

newtvstream.com

I'd imagine there are plenty more Zango affiliates firing out links on Twitter, so if you see people advertising "free movies" or TV shows, there's a good bet you'll be taken to a Zango installer prompt...

Do you really want me to answer that, kid?

"iBot Lite is the BEST Free RuneScape Bot around. We offer it for free, or you can suscribe to the paid version(which has more features). However, if you just would like to automine, autofight, etc. on RuneScape, then you can try out the FREE iBot Lite Version. If you want more features, and want to run more bots, and make MORE money, then please consider purchasing iBot Pro. This is the BEST RuneScape Bot EVER released for FREE! As well as the best PAID RuneScape Bot EVER!"

That sounds like all sorts of wrongness. Sure enough, visit the forum and you're presented with a wide array of downloads. One in particular, for a program called iBot / neXus, caught my eye.

Note that they claim more than eighteen thousand downloads - this will be important in a few moments.

What happened next is a bit of a first for me - a Zango installer prompt, launched from a forum instead of a regular website. Even better (or worse), check out the text on the Zango popup:


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I'm pretty sure it can't be a good thing to have "Click start to download your Runescape hack" and "& see our new glitch to get past 3k limit" on one of your installers.

The site has been around since 2006, but because Internet Archive hasn't save any of the installer pages there's no way to know how many of those 18,000+ downloaders installed Zango to get their hands on the missing Bot program, though we do know they've been on there since at least February of this year.

Wait, did I just say "missing"? Yep, because in a humorous twist, it seems the site owners want you to download Zango and then give you a missing download.




Really guys, how are these sites getting through quality control?

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...Jessica Simpson and Mischa Barton. I don't know about you, but I don't recall seeing Pam Anderson on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Okay, I hear you say - that's just some goofy marketing gone awry. It happens.

Sure it does. But as you wade through the site and see increasingly heavy duty material such as the Holocaust offered up as an incentive to install Zango:



...is it too much to ask that when you click through to see more historical videos, the first thing you see isn't Pamela Anderson in a see through top?




Stay classy, guys.

Maybe it's just me, but I think the owner of the site in question should perhaps put a little thought, care and respect into what they're promoting versus what they're actually sending people to. As it stands, it's just another cookie cutter website designed to send as many people as possible to the Zango website for some $$$ in the most tasteless, thoughtless way possible.

As a closing note, here's the full "I Have a Dream" speech, with no condensed videos, Zango or breasts in sight. I also have a dream, which involves tasteful advertising.

It's quite a long way off...

This entire document promotes illegal streaming to make a profit and unethical activity (it even has section on how to get an account approved with Zango if you've been previously rejected), yet the creator says "I'm not responsible".

Well, there's a surprise.

Even better, he says "You have NO rights to distribute this document", yet he stomps upon the copyright of the TV show creators he's making money from without permission. Once again, I'm shocked. On the bright side, I'm definitely not "dumb" where obtaining a copy of this document is concerned, because I woke up to find it tucked under my pillow.

Moving on, the rest of the introduction gives you a general rundown on Zango, payout rates and a screenshot of his earnings. Then we come to this:


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I'd take issue with this being the "only unethical thing" in the PDF, considering the whole thing is based on generating profit from pirated movies but anyway. Some choice extracts:

"Now, when you signup with Zango, use some fake details" is a nice start. I've blanked out his actual method for attempting to scam Zango, but honestly? I'm a little surprised that he claims such a stupid technique actually works.

As for this:

"...I've never been verified by phone, because I registered under a famous Zango user and he simply told them to accept me anyway".

If that's true, I'm dazzled - especially given that this guy is the King of promoting installs via pirated material in PDFs you have to pay 10 to 15$ to obtain.

The next section shows you how to build a site quickly, targeting the TV shows most likely to make you a lot of money. Oh, I forgot - the package comes with phpvideoscript, which enables you to build an endless stream of identikit websites.



Handy, eh?

Good job Lost is keeping him rolling in the money. It goes a bit wrong on the next page though, because he leaves what is apparently his Zangocash username in the screenshot.


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Say hello to xMastex! If Zango are reading this, you might want to go slamdunk his account in a ditch (if you haven't already), seeing as he's

1) Making money from PDFs ready rolling websites designed to profit from illegally ripped TV shows and movies via installs of your Adware and
2) Giving out "unethical" advice with regards joining your program with fake details.


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As you can see above, he then goes on to list the best places to grab ripped streams, ready to be placed on your freshly created army of websites. Because of the system used to manage the sites you've created, you can add a stupid amount of videos to the pages with little to no fuss:


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The rest of the document covers sites to submit your movie links to, traffic boosting and tricks involving places such as Sidereel.com. Oh, and this:



...I thought the only unethical part of this PDF was the bit where they signed up to Zango with fake information? Oh well.

Who is Doing This?

Well, there's a bit of a tangled web where that's concerned. A number of different names are used in Whois for many of the sites referenced by "Mastex" on various places, the document signs off as "Stefano" and there's apparently an updated version of this document floating around on the net too.

To make things more complicated, it seems there are quite a few people now making their own versions of these PDFs.

There's usually a trail though, and sure enough I happened to find a review of one of these PDFs where someone is asking for "review copies". It's screenshot time:



It's pretty likely "Marko" and Mastex aren't the same people,  because Stefano appears here as Mastex on Digg - but he's certainly promoting one of his own PDFs. The reviewer blanked out the URLs, but it's not too difficult to Google Marko + Gossipgirl websites ...


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Look at that - someone called Marko spamming links to viewgossipgirl.info, via a number of streaming sites. However, the really interesting bit is the Digg link.


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Well, I'm surprised by all the "watch free episodes online" links. Honestly.

Do a Whois search on Sick-Videos.net, and...

Man, someone forgot their anonymous Whois Guard, didn't they?

The document Marko is pushing seems to be different from the original Mastex version, so it's entirely possible there's a whole industry out there involving people creating (then selling) their very own "make money in a dubious fashion" PDFs. All of the Marko sites that offered up Zango (here's one) seem to have had the Zango popup removed so perhaps they killed his account - but that doesn't mean he has to stop selling his PDFs. And so the industry continues to grow.

The question is, when is someone going to do something about it?

Pretty, isn't it? Anyway, click into any of the episodes and you'll see a Zango installer.


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He doesn't look too happy about having his head pasted onto an adware prompt, but oh well.

What really made me laugh about this website was the usual boilerplate disclaimer at the bottom of the page:

"Disclaimer: We are not responsible for any content which is streamed through this website. If any damage occurs by the use of information presented here, only shall the content provider be held liable.The streaming videos that has been found here are hosted by third party. Any copyrighted videos, pictures or music is a property of the original copyright holder and it was found on third party sites. Therefore for any copyright violations, the owner of this blog is not liable."

Oh really? Is the owner of the blog "not liable" when we find the person uploading at least some of the content is what appears to be....


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....the owner of the blog?

This person is seemingly ripping, then uploading BBC material to promos on Youtube to make a quick profit from Zango. Some of the other sites out there doing this can try and squirm out of copyright related shenanigans by linking to videos hosted in China - nothing to do with us, someone else uploaded it - but here we apparently have the site owner himself uploading the copyrighted content.

Funnier still, once you've actually installed Zango, all of the pages look like this:


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There's a complete lack of videos. Whether you browse the site in IE or Firefox, there's nothing there. If you go back and check out what any of the supposed episode pages look like before you install Zango, you can see one of the "movie" windows behind the installer prompt. Note the length of the clip:


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Every single video has a running time of 8:10.

Could it be - and I don't want to appear overly cynical here - that the supposed Youtube videos "featured" on site are nothing more than jpegs of a Youtube video window? The alternative is the site is coded extremely poorly and there's some sort of glitch preventing you from watching a ream of episodes that all last exactly 8:10.

Either way, it's not the greatest deal going, especially when the people promoting the site on Youtube place messages such as these in their videos to bait people in:



Maybe Jonathan Ross should do a show about it...

 ...pretty, isn't it?.....you'll see this appear in the bottom left hand corner of your browser:

However, instead of being taken to the Zango gateway like you were previously, the screen flashes briefly and you're taken directly to the demo download.

In other words, no more Zango.

If I had to guess, I'd say Zango have either cancelled the site owners account, or it's still live but they're blocking him. Either way, the site is no longer making people install something before presenting them with a major letdown in the form of lame demo versions. So hey, if someone from Zango is reading this and you did indeed whack the account - thanks.

In each case, the advert promotes a popular videogame - most notably Half Life 2 and Fallout 3 in the above examples. The adverts are pretty clear - a picture of said game, and "Free, Legal". It seems reasonable to expect a deal has been made to allow you to obtain the advertised titles for free, legally.

Of course, it's all about to go horribly wrong.

Visit the site, and you quickly notice a few things - many 404 errors, pages that loop back on themselves and a lot of this:


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...hmmm. Moving swiftly on, we can see elements of the site are starting to slip from "reasonable" to "slimy". Namely, this:


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"Download Half Life 2" sits proudly at the top of the page - at this point, you'd expect the full game, wouldn't you? Especially as beneath the Download button sits a number of green bars with "Server Load" written on them - each showing a different percentage. You would think this is further evidence of the site pushing out large sized downloads of the full game - imagine your dismay, then, when you shortly discover the "Server Load" graphics are entirely fake and don't represent anything at all.

Hit the Download button, and you'll see this:


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An install prompt for Zango, pre-ticked (of course) and also giving you the option to have "free ShopperReports", whatever that is. Without installing this, you have no way to access the wonderful free game download waiting for you on the other side.

So you accept the prompt, and install Zango & company on your PC in return for the promise of a "free game".

What do you get?


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A CNET download page offering up the Half Life 2 demo of ONE LEVEL, is what you get.You can't even play it unless you install Steam and create an account.

Yes, you've just been taken for a ride.

Even better than that, the site owner (who registered the URL anonymously, of course) can't even be bothered to offer up the correct downloads. The second advert in this article clearly shows Fallout 3, and the Fallout 3 "download page" says this:

Fallout 3 is the third game in the great Fallout Series. It is a single player RPG action game that takes place in Washington DC, following a nuclear war. 200 years after the war, survivors live safely in a fallout shelter named Vault 101. When you find that your father has inexplicably left Vault 101, you follow him to the outside world. A world filled with Super Mutants, Giant Insects, Raiders, and Slavers.

Fallout 3 allows you to explore the entire former city of Washington with near limitless freedom. The game can be played from either 1st person, or 3rd person perspective, and the course you take throughout is entirely up to you.

On top of all this, Fallout 3 renders its environment in eye popping graphics. Every explosion, every character, and every piece of scenery is displayed in full HD, creating a really powerfull experience. This is definitely a game that must be played.

Download Fallout 3 now! Just click start on the next page.

Sounds awesome, doesn't it? Imagine the look on your face, then, when you've installed Zango, been taken to the download page and....

...you're offered a PROTOTYPE from 2003 that doesn't even resemble the game eventually released last year. It's so far removed from the promised game it's not even funny:

"While playable, Van Buren is a pre-alpha tech demo, never intended for public consumption. Many features, including combat, aren't fully implemented, the graphics are very basic, and it is extremely buggy. It is also has no connection whatsoever to the Fallout 3 project currently being developed by Bethesda."

What's particularly humorous here is that their adverts say "MyGamesFile does not host or link to illegal software". However, if you read how this "not for public consumption" demo was made available in the first place....

"Oddly enough, one day after putting a tooth I lost during a biking accident under my pillow, I woke up and found a CD under my pillow. Putting it in my computer, I found out it contained something called "demo.rar". Unzipping it, guess what I found. So thank you, tooth fairy"

Whoops. The demo seems to be "on general release" nowadays, but its origins seem somewhat "under the counter", to say the least. In case you were in any doubt just how different these two are, this is Van Buren:


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...and this is Fallout 3:


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The prosecution rests, your Honour.

Just when you think it can't get any stinkier, you scroll right down to the bottom of the page.

Do my eyes see something there? Why yes, they do.....sort of.

Oh my, dark grey text on a slightly lighter grey background. I wonder why they did that? Well, probably because it says this:

"MyGamesFile does not host or link to illegal software. All links are to legal, demonstration versions."

After all, nobody would install Zango (making the site owner money) if they were fully aware going into this "deal" that they could get these same demos elsewhere with no need to install anything, am I right? And if they furtively admit to doing nothing more than linking to demos elsewhere, what's with all the fake "server load" graphics all over the place?

This site fails.

It reminds me a little of the fake Batman MMORPG website from a few months ago - more importantly, it highlights how Zango continue to let bottom of the pile, cookie cutter sites like this through their Q&A process.

I'm willing to bet there's more of these out there. For now, the easiest way to ensure you don't get fooled by "offers" such as this is to switch off Javascript, then hit the "Download" button. If you're taken to something like Fileplanet or a Download.com Demo page, you know to back out slowly, not making any sudden movements...