One of those two sites is distributing adware. Which of them?
File Converter (FOSS) by Adrien Allard was hosted on file-converter[.]org since a decade. Then someone a few weeks ago snatched that domain and it’s now distributing adware. Almost identical design for the page, 100% designed to deceive users to download a different product, as it’s called Zamzar.
Report it to safe search so chrome starts blocking the page.
No u
In the github issues the dev is aware of this but he’s not completely enraged, just mildly infuriated that the design is too similar and he’s politely asking to have a different design.
From the history in the wayback machine i don’t see any “parking” page between the switch, so my guesswork is that the dev has been approached with an offer like “we like that domain, we would like to buy it for $$$”, unaware that they would copy the design like that in order to achieve maximum deception of users
If you contact the .org registry they’ll take it down. .org is for non-profits
Is that really an enforced rule somewhere, or just one of those loose intentions from the early days of domain names?
If it is, it’s news to me. I co-owned an education data consultancy (before realizing there was no money in education) that used a .org; we were for-profit.
Sounds like you unintentionally fit the brief anyway.
The people who maintain .org enforce it
TIL
Then they can just buy another domain under .Dev or .app
It’s like playing whack a mole
If it used to be a valid website, and is now a scam, that’s a mole worth whacking - even if they’ll try again with a previously unknown url
It seems it’s not so much they stole the domain, it’s that they are using the same name with a different top-level domain. This is a common shady practice in malware. Most people can’t afford to purchase every TLD or their domain and so just pick one or two. Problem is that search engines will find the bad TLDs and suggest them over the real TLD if the malware providers do proper SEO manipulation. A FOSS author is unlikely to be able to or afford the time and effort it takes to manipulate search results and most popular search engines are not doing much to fix the problem, and instead relying on “AI” to reduce the costs of maintaining their search results, which does a pretty bad job, IMHO.
originally it was hosted in the .org domain, then somehow it changed hands and it was changed to .io
Ah, thanks for clarifying. I didn’t see that mentioned anywhere and the git repo is showing .io
Would fdroid be safe from this kind of practice? Of course there’s no web domains involved but the exploit there is potentially the same
Yes, Android apps are signed and Android refuses updates with a different signature.
What I mean is fake apps with slightly different names, does fdroid have the potential to approve them? Even if it’s open source, if someone intentionally adds malicious code it can take a couple months to spot, while the scan is going on.
Mildly infuriating? Sounds more like genuinely criminal
This is why I refuse to use any download buttons on websites for FOSS apps; if it’s FOSS, it has a link to the source, which has releases, and is the safest way to ensure you’re getting what you actually want.
Forked, malware added?
No, I tried it in a VM and it’s a completely different app. It seems like a shitty electron app that sits forever in the tray wasting ram just to upload files in their cloud for conversion instead of converting locally. And then it shows prompt to subscribe from the tray
I’m guessing it’s the one on the left that’s new.
deleted by creator
You’ve got left and right mixed up.
whoops
🫵🤨British🇬🇧
Ooof! That “View on GitHub” button made me believe it was the real one
Nah you had it right. They mixed up left and right.
This is always what scares me about FOSS having their own websites like this. What happens when that domain runs out and this exact thing happens???
