Shareaza shanghaied
p2pnet news | P2P:- "Summary: shareaza.com is now a SCAM site. The shareaza.com site was taken by scammers, always get Shareaza from http://shareaza.sourceforge.net/."
That’s still the message originally posted by ale5000 on December 20 on sourceforge.
Shareaza is one of the oldest multi-network p2P file-sharing clients supporting Gnutella2, Gnutella, eDonkey2000 (eMule), HTTP, FTP and BitTorrent protocols in C++, MFC and ATL, for Windows.
Developed by Michael Stokes, what makes it unusual is: it’s free software licensed under the GNU General Public License and since 2004, has been maintained by a group of volunteers.
"According to Skinvista, a developer from the ‘real’ Shareaza, the situation is as follows," said enigmax on TorrentFreak on Christnas Eve:
At this time the Shareaza.com destination is now controlled by iMesh/MusicLab LLC, an unauthorized Madison Avenue (New York) based company, with servers in Israel. MusicLab LLC previously acquired iMesh.com and Bearshare/Bearflix.com following lawsuits. It now appears the known scamsite Shareazaweb.com was a placeholder for the planned takeover of Shareaza, relating to another ongoing lawsuit.
It is urgent that people understand the software on these iMesh/MusicLab sites is suspicious, misrepresented, and illegal -breaking GPL and DMCA among other laws.
And in an update, "A contact of Jonathan Nilson is reporting that Nilson can neither confirm nor deny that he sold the domain to the scammers."
As we post this, there’s no further news, but on Christmas day, "the hijacked Shareaza.com domain now points to a server where it is hosted along with some other questionable sites, including bandoo.com, bearflix.com, bearshare.com, daemonsearch.com, imesh.com, imesh.net and musiclab-llc.com," says enigmax on Slyck, going on:
Apparently, there are lawyers involved now but the loose-knit Shareaza team are advising that it may be prudent to move forward on the basis that the domain won’t be recovered. A source close to this case has told TorrentFreak that Jonathan Nilson, the owner of the Shareaza.com domain has been contacted and he has confirmed that he has sold the domain to the scammers. It looks like the domain is lost forever, a big impact following the loss of the main site in October.
‘Wildcard’ explained that the software on offer from the hijacked site although labeled “ShareazaV4.exe”, is not Shareaza at all but likely a clone of the new malware infested iMesh/Bearshare client and should not be downloaded under any circumstances. Once installed, the software wants to install a search bar and make contact with a central server. Unlike Shareaza – which is abslutely free and has a reputation for being non-profit and shunning involvement with money – the hijackers are touting a subscription based product.
Indeed, the operators of iMesh even tried to trick people into thinking that the reputable GRC site endorsed the iMesh client – an assertion which is completely untrue.
Anyone wishing to find the real Shareaza client should head over to the project’s SourceForge page.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
TorrentFreak – Shareaza.com Hijacked and Turned Into a Scam Site, December 24, 2007
Slyck – Shareaza.com Hijacked and Turned Into a Scam Site, December 24, 2007
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.
December 27th, 2007 at 8:51 am
is the imesh 7.0 considered a scam as far as having spyware/adware when they say they habe 100% none?
December 27th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
http://shareaza.sf.net
Tell all your friends.
December 28th, 2007 at 7:11 am
New postPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2007 7:17 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
oooh been wondering when P2Pnet will get hold of this story – I’ve known about it for quite some time… and from what I understand, and this is not quoting anything iMesh say, but since Shareaza were facing a lawsuit from the French RIAA, I believe the guy who owned the domain, and similar scam sites, sold them all over to iMesh. I’ve no idea how much for. Guessing he wants rid of this lawsuit, could be part of his settlement… sell the domain to iMesh…
The iMesh staff own several scam sites, to quote one of admins posts in the past
Quote:
As for imeshgold.com – the answer is simpler than some suggestions here. iMesh owns a number of domains with word “imesh” in it, partly to prevent scams like imesh-download-imesh.com. And it’s quite natural that the other domains of the same company redirect to the main website.
Shareazaweb.com was a scam site, got passed over to iMesh, as well as shareaza.com – guessing the guy also had control over similar sites…
They also seem to keep some emphasis on the country, Israel… I see no purpose, iMesh has always been developed in Israel, the Israeli’s, or one of them, created ’swarming’, downloading the same file from many users at the same time, from iMesh 1 in 1999 (I think it was) till iMesh 7.1, today in 2007.
January 26th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
The solution is simple – if the name cannot be reclaimed – change the name of the client to something other like ShareazaGNU