Computer Act!ve - UK (2022-04-27)

(Maropa) #1

Named & Shamed


SOFTWARE WARNING!


21

WHAT ARE THEY BARRY’S VILLAIN OF THE FORTNIGHT
TALKING ABOUT?

Issue 630 • 27 April – 10 May 2022

Google scammer Gavin Dalglish


Click this and you’ll get Opera, Skype and more Trojans than The Iliad

Barry Collins puts the boot into tech villains, jargon-


spouting companies and software trying to trick you


Don’t get Snappy Driver from Sdi-tool.org


H


ere’s a cautionary tale
from reader David
Noble, who told us
how he was caught out after
installing Snappy Driver, as we suggested
in Issue 627’s ‘Stop Using Rubbish
Software’ Cover Feature.
He admits he didn’t quite follow our
advice to the letter. Instead of using the
snipca link we provided (www.snipca.
com/41002) to safely download the
software from the developer’s site,
David searched for the program on
Google. That might sound sensible
enough, but the site at the top of the
search results (https://sdi-tool.org) is
blatantly using the software’s good
name to download junk on to PCs.
Clicking the yellowy-orange Download
button (pictured) not only smuggles in
the Opera browser and Skype without
warning, but a subsequent scan from
Malwarebytes revealed no fewer than 14
Trojans (that’s more than in The Iliad).
If David had scrolled further down the
page, he might have seen the Russian
language text and run a mileski. Instead,
he clicked the big download buttons at

the top. When we tried to follow in
his footsteps in Windows 11, the Edge
browser blocked the download, warning
it was unsafe.
Even after we clicked through the
warnings (on a safe virtual machine),
Windows 11 wouldn’t let us run the
downloaded software, warning it was a
virus. David was using an older version
of Windows, which doesn’t have these

safety nets.
Microsoft takes a lot of stick in this
column, but it’s done a top job here.
But Google: you can see me after school.
The moral of the tale for readers,
meanwhile, is to only download from
our snipca links (and to follow our
Snappy Driver Workshop on page 38).
Oh, and please keeptelling us when
you spot wrong ‘uns.

It’s not only dodgy software sites that
want to be top of the Google search
results (see above), it’s legitimate
companies too. Such prominence can
make or break a business. This partly
explains how Gavin Dalglish managed
to dupe charities, community groups
and small businesses into thinking he
was a Google executive who could get
them to the top of the search charts.
Over a period of eight years,
Dalglish, 38, swindled more than half
a million pounds out of his victims,

spending his ill-gotten gains
on luxury travel, gambling and
cocaine, according to the Sidmouth
Herald, which actually employed
Dalglish for a while in its advertising
department.
His Google scam cost one
77-year-old victim his home, forcing
him to cash in pensions to buy a
smaller house. Dalglish is now living
in more modest accommodation as
well, having been sentenced to five
years in prison at Exeter Crown Court.

WHAT THEY SAY
Mozilla http://www.snipca.com/41511 “HTML
and CSS offer semantic transparency,
providing the browser with a model of
the presentation which can be modified
or reinterpreted. Web standards
give the browser wide discretion to
operate, and the loose coupling of Web
Platform features and their uneven and
incremental deployment discourages
sites from making hard assumptions
about the final result.”

WHAT THEY MEAN
All browsers are fab, but use Firefox.
Free download pdf