Beware of the advertisement
posted Jul 1, 2012, 10:36 PM [ updated Jul 1, 2012, 10:41 PM ]
I have received two reports that the advertisement box on the left, below the donation button, would contain a fake generic download button. This would make people think, that's where they could download Singularity. Instead, they got a load of spyware - people would be asked to download 7Zip installer which has multiple instances of spyware in it. Note, original 7Zip installer from 7zip.org is clean and does NOT contain any spyware, so it has been added extra by malicious people. We are not responsible for the contents of advertisement boxes, the advertisements are chosen for us by Google. There are two possibilities of what could have happened:
- Possibly, Google cocked up and missed a malicious advert. We don't get to see in advance what kinds of advertisements are served, and there are tens of thousands that Google chooses from, so there is no chance on our end to prevent this.
- Perhaps, the persons affected already have spyware on their computers. Some malicious software modifies internet traffic, removing legit and safe advertisements and replacing them with malicious ones.
In either case, either if you're repeatedly seeing a Download button in the advertisement box, or if you had seen one before, clicked on it and installed garbage, perhaps it's not the worst idea to get cleaned up. Best possibility is to restore prior state from a backup. If you can't do that, second best thing, is to use spyware removal tool. Here's the tool which seems most mature and most popular at the moment, all the while being not too harmful, but be aware nonetheless that any tool of this kind can damage your system:
Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware Free Edition
When you want to download Singularity, please do so from our Download section, and if you have ideas to make the site more straightforward and less prone to such abuse, do send suggestions.
P.S. We aren't dead, We're working.