Code Emporium

I was in the market for a copy of Adobe Acrobat the other week for the work I’ve been doing over on Centreleak. I didn’t really know where to get a copy at a good price, so I headed over to Google.

I soon found a site topsoftshop that were selling Adobe Acrobat for the bargain price of $88 USD (and yes, for Adobe Acrobat, that is a bargain). I did my usual preliminary test for determining whether a deal is legitimate or not by looking at the website. If it looks like it could have been put together in under an hour, it’s probably not legit. Historically this rule has served me well and screened out 99% of the bad eggs. Anyway, topsoftshop passed the test. As you’ll see if you visit the site, it all looks very professional and there’s not any obvious hints that it would be a scam. Even if you read the terms and conditions or take a look around other pages on the site, there’s far fewer spelling and grammatical errors than you would find on your average scam site.

Anyway, after taking a look around I was pretty confident it was legitimate and so went ahead and purchased a copy of Adobe Acrobat. Might I add, payment was through Paypal, which also boosted my confidence. Admittedly I didn’t bother to check whether I was actually covered by Paypal against fraud, but for an $88 purchase, I couldn’t be bothered trying to make sense of their rules surrounding the matter. So everything was going smoothly, and then an alarm bell went off:

That’s a print screen from the Paypal transaction. The transaction all seemed normal at first. Topsoftshop asks me to enter all my shipping details, it all looks legit, I’m taken to Paypal and I enter an email address (yes, an English sounding one) to send money to and an amount of $88 USD and click pay. Only then does Paypal inform me of the name of the recipient that I’ve sent my $88 USD to. It’s old mate off in Asia; Wu Chao-Hop according to Google translate. So at this point I figure I’ve probably done my dough, and get ready to report the matter to Paypal in a few weeks time when my copy of Adobe Acrobat has predictably not turned up. So I forget about it all for now.

A few days later though, I receive an email from my friends at topsoftshop letting me know that my copy of Adobe Acrobat has shipped and they’ve even given me a tracking number. I go to the postage site they’ve linked me to (a Chinese site) and enter my tracking number and sure enough there’s a record there in the system. I’m starting to think this is legitimate again. I mean I’ve heard of elaborate scams, but going to the effort to create your own postage site and rig it up with order tracking is just way too much effort. Anyway, the postage site and tracking number were both real and they had shipped at least something.

A few days later, a knock on my door and sure enough, I’ve got a package, direct from China. It kinda looks like the size of box you’d expect software to come in, so I figure its all good and open it up. Inside there’s a nice “Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro” cardboard box and inside that is a perfectly legitimate looking disc and even little Adobe pamphlets. Take a look.

So I chuck the CD into my computer. Being sceptical, I decide to first check out the directory structure on the CD before installing. Here’s what I find:

Low and behold, what do I find in the completely inconspicuous “Serial Fix” directory? A cracked .dll and directions on how to install it. I’ve got to say topsoftshop, 10 out of 10 for effort put into creating a fake that appears very real. But why go to so much effort when you’d need to use a crack to get the software to work anyway? I think by the time you’re installing a crack it would be preeeetty obvious that your software is not legit, which kind of negates all of the effort that went into replicating the fancy packaging. I don’t know, perhaps they’ve rigged up the installer so that the crack gets applied automatically and they just hope that some sucker doesn’t look in the directory structure.

So by this point I assume my money is probably long gone and that the topsoftshop site will evaporate within a day or two. I figure I should let Paypal know about it anyway, so I log on and lodge a dispute. The first step of lodging a dispute on Paypal is very hands-off from Paypal’s point of view. You go on and lodge a dispute that contains a message that gets sent to the person you bought the stuff from, but Paypal doesn’t look at it at this point. So this is what I do. I go on, write a message to topsoftshop explaining that there was a crack folder in the software they sent me (as if they didn’t know) and submit the dispute. Then it’s off to bed.

Here’s where it gets brilliant. The next day I wake up and check my email and I’ve got a message from Paypal saying my dispute has been closed. There’s no mention of why it’s been closed, so I log onto Paypal to checkout what’s happened. Here’s what I see:

Topsoftshop had refunded my money! No message, no email or explanation, they’ve just refunded my money. That’s like the worst scam ever. You take peoples money, give them pirated software and then later on when they point it out to you, you just hand the money straight back over? Doesn’t that sort of defeat the purpose of scamming people in the first place?

The best I can surmise is that they hope that they sell enough pirate software to people who couldn’t be bothered complaining and for those who do complain, they quietly refund the money in the hope that they just shut up about the whole issue and don’t notify Paypal. Well guess what topsoftshop? Up yours! I’m going to dob on you to Paypal anyway.

So there you have it. I’ve got my money back and I’m now the proud owner of a strikingly good looking fake of Adobe Acrobat Pro. The whole episode has been as hilarious as it has saddening. Whatever you do, please don’t buy software from topsoftshop and do the best you can to avoid other professional looking fakes. After all, they might not all happily refund your money!

If you’ve ever installed Visual Studio, you’ll have seen the generic models that the installer cycles through on your screen. They all look exactly that; like models, with little resemblance to the average Visual Studio user. If you haven’t ever installed Visual Studio, here’s a taste:

Personally I find this to be the worst offender. When I saw this, I figured Ikea must be selling sweaters now. I’d hire him as an interior designer, but not as a software developer.

This guy you could conceivably find actually writing code, though I’d say he’d be in the top 1% presentation wise amongst the programming community, so hardly representative. I never noticed, but according to some, he has a face too small for his head also.

This picture isn’t actually too unrealistic, apart from the Colgate smile. I would however say that her presentation is still probably well above average for programmers. She is also a she, and lets face it, sad but true, most programmers are male.

All in all, they’re the usual suspects of corporate software installs; clean shaven, well dressed and in this particular case, look like they’ve probably never written a line of code before in their life. To Microsoft’s credit, the models they’ve used are far closer to reality than those shown in many other stock photos. I’m sure I could have chosen a much better example of an installer with superficial models, but I’m lazy. I was installing Visual Studio at the time, and you know the install is going to take long enough that you’ll have plenty of print screen opportunities.

I’ve always felt as though people would have more respect for a product if the models they used actually looked remotely like the people that use the product. So with my sub par photo editing skills, I drew up some prototypes for the programmer’s edition of Visual Studio, now featuring real programmers! With a bit of luck, you’ll see these babies in the Visual Studio 2010 installer. See if you can pick the characters.

See, it’s not so bad when you include an actual programmer in the photo. The expression is a little bit used car salesman, but I think this can be overlooked. I mean hey, he’s even wearing a suit (of sorts). Surely that’s enough to keep the corporate types happy.

Ok, so he’s wearing flannel. He might not win any fashion awards, but if you knew who he was you’d have huge restecp. Actually, the idea of getting to wear flannel while you work already earns my respect, even if you are just some hobo off the street.

Ok, so conceivably it would be a little more difficult pitching this one to Microsoft for the Visual Studio 2010 installer. I don’t even know what to say about this one. It either shows the stark contrast that occurs when you combine the head of a programmer with the body of a model, or the stark contrast that occurs when you do a particularly poor job of editing photos.

Once again, getting this one into the Visual Studio 2010 installer would be somewhat of a challenge. I’m not going to add anything to that, the picture says enough.

Truth be told, I suspect (and in some cases know) that the programmers above wouldn’t use Visual Studio anyway. Their photos just happened to be handy. Still, I imagine there’s plenty of .NET programmers out there whose appearance is a far stretch from the models you see in the installer. Nonetheless, it seemed only fitting to add one more concept image for the Visual Studio 2010 installer of someone who I’m sure would use Visual Studio if they were still programming on a daily basis.

On second thoughts, let’s just stick with using models…