Speaking with Spammers

One of my jobs at Macworld is to help moderate our forums. And part of that job is to keep the forums as free of clutter as possible. Some of that clutter comes in the form of spam—a lot of it from Chinese companies promoting media conversion utilities.

It happens that, at the same time, some of these companies solicit us for reviews of their software. I find it a little nervy that on the one hand, they’re using sleazy marketing tricks to promote their stuff and gain Google hits by the sheer number of Web mentions generated by their spam and, on the other hand, attempting to promote their software as legitimate.

These companies work this way. A Chinese-based company creates these utilities—generally some kind of media converter or ripper. Invariably open-source software like FFmpeg lies underneath this stuff, though it’s not always credited as it’s supposed to be. That company then has several brands. The software’s interface is skinned differently for each brand, but is otherwise the same in terms of functionality. The interfaces are invariably garish and the UI clumsy.

I have no problem naming the companies that have spammed us in the last several months—and yes, this company is among them. If you have an aversion to spammers and the wares they peddle, here’s a handy list of companies to avoid.