Beware of the Fake Shareaza

I have a lot of contacts who always ask me how I get a hold of so many different things. My common response is "Shareaza". Not thinking anything further as I know full well if they go to Google it will come up. However, the first site that comes up on Google is shareaza.com "The Official Home of Shareaza". Regardless of what the page claims, that is not the official home, nor is it the official program listed upon their page. It was only after a friend said to me "Oh I can't afford to pay for that." That I became curious what she was talking about.

If you are wondering if you are running the legitimate version of Shareaza, there are several ways of checking if you have this fake Shareaza.

Fake Shareaza's uninstall doesn't work, at least not without some manual removal both in folders and registry.

Beware that the fake Shareaza's version is 4.0 or higher, real Shareaza is incrementally numbered from 2.0 blahblahblah, and up.

Fake Shareaza requires a valid credit card; though in some machines it doesn't always ask for the credit card in order to download.

Fake Shareaza knocks the real Shareaza off your computer.

Sadly at this time Shareaza 4 doesn't come up as a virus, malware, spyware or a Trojan, so there isn't a quick warning that you've downloaded the fake Shareaza.

Be aware that the real Shareaza is free of use, and will never ever ask for a credit card to use. Because Shareaza is open source it's hosted on sourceforge.net not Shareaza.com. The reason it's not a .com is because it's free and its code is available for all to see, use and edit. Not to rip off and sell off.

How did this happen? Well, someone took advantage of the old code in Shareaza that checks several URLs for it's updates. Among the URLs it checks is www.shareaza.com, which is an unrelated company, Discordia, has now registered. So when the real Shareaza does its regular checking for updates, it offers to download the fake Shareaza to replace itself. This is why the older versions of Shareaza on www.oldversions.com shouldn't be one of the ones you wish to use or tell others about. Someday they may forget about the update it asks about and end up screwing up their system.

Sadly, I guess you could call it bad programming that one of the URLs wasn't even one that was already owned and operated by Shareaza's owner and creator. Common sense would tell you to not have it looking in places that it doesn't belong.

In order to protect others and ourselves we need to spread word of horrible things discovered like this. Because new users would never know, suspect or doubt the fake Shareaza site.