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The software awards scam

successfulsoftware.net — This software product has so far won 16 different awards and recommendations from software download sites. Minor issue is it doesn't even run - it is just a text file with the words “this program does nothing at all” repeated a few times and then renamed as an executable.

made popular 1 year 144 days ago

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  • AriaStar, on 10/10/2007, -4/+55Where are Digg's awards??
    • OBKenobi, on 10/10/2007, -2/+17That's isn't such a bad idea. Except, how would we vote for them?
      • thcobbs, on 10/10/2007, -0/+48Let me think....

        Hrrm..... If only there was a way of giving approval/disapproval for an item listed on digg.................................


        I'm sure there HAS to be a way.
        • Reziarfg, on 10/10/2007, -0/+29Quit goin' in circles and tell us already!!
    • acu8509, on 10/10/2007, -0/+15probably because when they were posting the awards they got a "session expired" error.
      • thcobbs, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10Well, if you're posting an award that deeply in a comment thread.... you don't deserve to win!
    • ThePixelator, on 10/10/2007, -6/+17Thats a great idea! I've even got some ideas for some categories:
      most elaborate conspiracy
      longest rant
      most liberal-biased article
      the how-the-hell-did-this-make-it-to-the-front-page award

      and some awards for the users (this being a user based site):
      greatest bush hater
      most self-centered intellectual
      stupidest comment

      just to name a few...
      • a3r0, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10You'll need a Top 10 list for each
      • tech42er, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4I hope I'm in the 10 for most self-centered intellectual. I'm a libertarian, so I get the self-centered easily. Now for the intellectual...
        • MWeather, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Which party is the intellectual one?
  • str3ama, on 10/10/2007, -1/+15I always suspected this, but I guess this confirms that those awards are BS - not surprising since you almost always see the cruddiest software showing of their awards - and then trying to use those awards to validate that they don't "have any spyware" in the program. I only wish the author would provide the direct links to his software for each site so that we can confirm his story, because right now we're just going purely on his story.
    • thcobbs, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6Only awards that are decided after the second martini of the morning should count!

      Who's with me?
  • Fl0ydP1nkert0n, on 10/10/2007, -2/+51This reminds me of the Grammies for some reason.
  • markp93, on 10/10/2007, -1/+93I could see how it won awards, at least the software does exactly what it is designed to do, and it is probably a very secure piece of code :)
    • nontitle, on 10/10/2007, -26/+10much better than windows...
      • ThePixelator, on 10/10/2007, -8/+20go away.
        seriously, I hate you people.
        • MWeather, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2They'll go away when Microsoft make a secure OS. In other words, get used to it.
        • Myonosken, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Hey Weather, I don't go around bitching about the flaws in Linux, so stfu. Windows is fine for those of us that want something easy and stable (and yes XP SP2 is ***** damn stable alright).
      • chilekillr, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8Who didn't see that coming though?
      • tech42er, on 10/10/2007, -5/+8It's even more secure than any *nix system and completely user-proof.
        • Myonosken, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Why's he getting dugg down? Are you seriously saying a single line of text is LESS SECURE than *nix? ***** fanboys.
    • teckieee, on 10/10/2007, -11/+2id give him fifty stars for the idea alone
  • CYR1X, on 10/10/2007, -7/+7Is this surprising?
    • OBKenobi, on 10/10/2007, -11/+11Some people will believe anything. Like that Saddam caused 9/11.
      • Kedyn, on 10/10/2007, -9/+11How do you bring Saddam into a comment about bogus software? Doesn't make much sense to me.
        • MWeather, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Bogus software, bogus war. See the connection?
      • tech42er, on 10/10/2007, -6/+2I give that comment 5 stars!
  • RocketGib, on 10/10/2007, -0/+67Not to mention that his code is cross-platform!
  • LotusWolf, on 10/10/2007, -0/+27I give that article 5 stars
  • insomniac8400, on 10/10/2007, -10/+3As long as the sites don't tack on spyware, I wouldn't call them bottom feeders. They are hosting the programs for free.
    • ctrlfreak13, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Thats not the point, it's that these sites are mindlessly accepting programs and awarding nearly all of them top ratings without ever even using the program itself
      • sirbeta, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I agree completely but I will note that a website should not, I repeat *not* be using all these programs and judging them entirely themselves or you're bound to run into a lot of bias. There are a lot of programs out there that fill the needs of a lot of people, and while the website might have the best intention, be totally lost when it comes to "testing" a program that comes in. For example, throw 3ds max at any person who doesn't know how to use modeling programs and you get a lot of grief, or they might get down-ranked because they think that something should be easier, merely because they are unexperienced.
        • Philluminati, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2They are awarding stars to anything without any basis to do so.
  • LordSlashstab55, on 10/10/2007, -4/+3aren't all award ceremonies just plain dumb anyways...
    • swrlyhrly, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4This isn't about award ceremonies. Did you RTFA?
  • jdhammer, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6Bravo!

    Nothing looks more foolish than a company caught with its pants down......
  • flaterates, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6Read this! Click the link! SFW What a great program! Five stars!
  • cotaskmemalloc, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Not surprised in the least... but wouldn't have guessed it. Pretty funny stuff, though!
  • LotusWolf, on 10/10/2007, -0/+15http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=awardmestars&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
    and
    http://www.ezgoal.com/channels/utilities/score.asp?f=423073

    i wonder who gave it 9/10 stars...i guess it didnt quite do nothing good enough
  • Tobark, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10Not sure what the guy means. It ran fine on my Win 3.11 system.
  • grungegbunny, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Great job on busting this out. Much of the internet has no oversight for quality control so its up to users like this to bring it into the spotlight.
  • miriclaire, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4This was a great "heads-up" for people. The proliferation of ***** on the internet is so vast that we should give awards to people like this guy--who tracked it and exposed it. Very digg-worthy!
  • moojj, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Many years ago I developed shareware applications that were listed on many download sites (and continue to be listed). In fact, I still get awards for my software products (even though the products don't even exist anymore).

    The "awards" are more about PR than they are about the quality of the product. If you receive a 5 star award for your software you will be more inclined to list it on your website along with the nice logo they give you and a link back to their "review" page. --- With that said, my publisher used to have an "affiliate" program. Sites could sell the products and receive a 20%-30% commission. Oddly enough, sites that got a commission for the sale would rank the software higher than those that didn't.
  • kh99, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1The thing that amazes me is that no site (of the ones that gave him an award) has thought of awarding more than 5 stars.
  • cl0n3x, on 10/10/2007, -8/+1You spelled "practise" wrong. Nice.
  • evilpettingzoo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Well it was spyware and virus free.
  • petebert, on 10/10/2007, -3/+0wow a bunch of awards from companys that show up in can you guess which one is lindsay lohan ads, does anyone really download crap from something other then download.com?
  • Copia, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1brilliant my friend, fricken brilliant.......
  • EdgarVerona, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Aye, this is 100% common. Basically, you should ignore any awards you see for products from sites you've never heard of.

    lol, the first version of our software got solicited for probably two dozen "awards" within the first week of us posting it (without us even asking them, or even knowing they existed... they sent us E-Mails informing us that we "won" their "award"), and it was utter ***** because our program was having major issues on most people's computers until our first patch a few weeks later that fixed it all up.

    Apparently the sites that hand out these phony "awards" are looking for a few things:

    1) Advertisement for their bogus sites (where they spam people with advertisements or get them to download spyware)
    2) Hosting (and then corrupting) otherwise valid software that they claimed "won" the "award" (as in they add spyware to otherwise healthy install programs)
    3) They try to directly hit up the company for money in exchange for other BS reviews and "awards".

    When we realized what was happening, we flipped all these bogus companies the bird and called it a day. It's definately lame.
  • raccettura, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5This is common in many industries. Web Hosting is another one. They constantly try to get hosting companies to pay for listing, reviews, etc. etc. End users often don't know that these things are generally pretty bogus.

    If PC World, MacWorld, CNet or other publications rate something... it's pretty legit. But most of the other awards are BS.
  • Elliuotatar, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I submitted one of my software products to shareware sits a year ago, and so far I've gotten about nine "awards". I didn't bother listing them on my page because it's pretty obvious all those awards are just intended to get you to link back to the shareware site so they get a higher google rank. I also don't think listing these sorts of awards would help convince many people to buy your software.
  • Skurt, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Anyone else think it's ironic that when you go the the site, on the way there in the status bar it says;

    "Waiting for Successful software..."
  • dhughes, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4 I downloaded it and it works exactly as the author said. Two thumbs up! ;)
  • goldenratiophi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Does its job perfectly and doesn't crash easily. I don't see the problem here.



    /sarcasm, obviously
  • bigteebo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7In the early days of the web, people were all too proud to put "awards" they got from various websites, to put on their geocities page. Looks like the tradition continues. My favorite one was the "bottom 95% of the web"(a spoof of top 5% IIRC), and "everyone gets an award". Wow that's oldschool.
  • Travisx2, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Anyone here remember "Beep Pro"?
    now with VGA graphics support.
  • chrisbarr, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I remember back when Mac OS Tiger Widgets were new, I made a few very very simple ones ( a clock and a CNN RSS feed reader) and I "won" some awards for my "software". They approved because it didn't contain viruses. I was proud of my work, but I'd hardly call some javascript and HTML "software". Needless to say, I never displayed my awarded badges anywhere.
  • clueless25, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Apparently, awardmestars.exe is hosted on PC World as well.
    http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,66947-order,1-page,1-c,utilities/description.html
    • Frosty122, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3that's diffrent than having an award though.
    • breckinshire, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Anyone else think it's weird that it's on the same page with the Windows 2000 Service Pack 2?
  • wenqiang7, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I suspect the same thing long ago. It's great that the author take the trouble to prove it.
  • AnnaBay21, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2the programmers do have sense of humor :-)
  • squegie, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Here's one with the 5 stars:
    http://www.getfreesofts.com/soft/819/63296/awardmestars.html
  • Tivor, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I'm surprised that there are that many download sites around. @_@ Why do even need that many?

    Anyway, excellent article. Kudos to the author.
  • thailand1972, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Website directories do this too. They say "we've awarded you Site of The Day for xxxx date!!! Well done!!!! Please put this rosette on your website and link back to our site to confirm the award is valid!!!". The whole point is: they just want you to link to their site and they give out hundreds of "awards" daily. It's sad when I see people display these on their site and even collect them.
  • rohan2kool, on 10/10/2007, -5/+1http://isohunt.com/torrents/?ihq=Facebook%20code
  • Haidoken, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0just goes to show how many bs sites are out there just to make a buck
  • Frosty122, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3i downloaded his software, but it doesn't do anything...can anyone help me?
    • Sushubh, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2oooh. i am on linux. i can't help ya.
    • Kitsune818, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Yeah, it's simple. You need to edit the file in a hex editor, then, add in all the code to do what you want it to do. Then execute it.
    • Aliarse, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Press CTRL + ALT + DELETE three times as fast as you can.
  • marinLETOILE, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Investigative nerdalism at its best.
  • fluteflute, on 10/10/2007, -0/+210,800 results on Google for awardmestars!
  • lazlonger, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Fantastic. Long live the inquisitive mind!
  • Shawn4168, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Wow...absolutely brilliant. This guy is awesome.
  • joltguy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4The Mac version of this software is way better.
  • MRCOPIATECH, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Social Engineering is my most favorite hack and there is really no defense against it as long as people are curious about things or fascinated by things...like something as silly as the program you reported.
  • greatkingrat85, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3This is no worse than folk digging an article without reading it.
  • astrotrain, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Watch as the simple 'txt' file used in this story, is re-bundled into a "setup.exe" which contains now loads of Spyware, then these types of awards are posted all over it to get as many people infected as possible while the site owner is getting paid by the Spyware companies a percentage of money per each title downloaded, and each PC infected with Spyware.
  • Kitsune818, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2What? You mean my site ISN'T one of the Top 10% on the Web? My Turbo Pascal calculator-clone from 1992 isn't a TOP RATED DOWNLOAD?
  • Phantom76, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I feel this is a non issue. I do not know any of the websites which has given him those awards. You should be a fool to download software from these sites.
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