Enigma software do it again?

Sometimes - people never learn. Take Enigma Software, for example - not so long ago, they were blacklisted, everyone hated them and nobody wanted to buy their products. Unfair advertising, they said. Rogue affiliates, she said. Unreliable applications, that guy from down the street said.

And guess what? They actually tried to clean up their act, leading to SpyHunter being removed from the Rogue Antispyware list - no mean feat. And though I recently covered an act of sabotage on the Wikipedia, I was prepared to let that one go as "youthful" high spirits, like those kids that break your fence and set fire to your house.

However - I came across something the other day that, quite frankly, knocked me sick and put them back into my bad books (and you don't want to end up in there!)

The UR I.T Mate site has some fantastic pieces of software on it - amongst them, the Index.dat Suite which is an excellent way to clean out your PC on a regular basis. Unfortunately, the Enigma group must have had a sudden drop of the stupid-as-anything sauce, because wouldn't you just know it if one of their domains has just suddenly sprouted the following pages:

http://www.adorons.com/index.dat_suite/index.dat_suite.html

http://www.adorons.com/index.dat/index.dat.html

The first page is empty - the second is an advert for Adorons Easy Security, with some spurious references to "removing index.dat" files. Let's see how many times the words "index.dat" are used.....wow, EIGHT times in ONE paragraph and a sentence! Either that's appalling English, or they're just looking to bump themselves up in Google / Yahoo / the other ones.

Just to be on the safe side, they throw this in at the bottom:

\WINDOWS\Cookies\index.dat
\WINDOWS\History\index.dat
\WINDOWS\Temporary Internet Files\index.dat
\WINDOWS\Cookies\index.dat
\WINDOWS\History\index.dat
\WINDOWS\Temporary Internet Files\index.dat

By this point, I imagine anyone reading their site has had their brain turned to mush and they're reaching for the credit card just so as not to hear "index.dat" anymore!

The good news is, bad as these practices are, there is hope - take this site, for example. It would probably be really bad for Enigma if everyone knew about their little game, wouldn't it? And I imagine it would be shockingly bad for them, if a site with massive traffic and riddling Google like some sort of tapeworm from Hell exposed them for what they are, by using the same tactics?

Well - it's your lucky day, because I'm momentarily going to forget how to type and index.dat index.dat index.dat index.dat index.dat index.dat index.dat index.dat index.dat index.dat index.dat. Whoops, must have nodded off there!

Do yourself a favour - steer clear of such woeful practices and go straight to the source.

Hey, Enigma - index THAT!