Dan…
I have a request in to Adobe corporate to provide a plain-language statement on these sorts of offers. They appear so often, and so many people wonder if the deal is for real. We regulars here on the forums need to know how to steer folks like you in the legal and proper direction.
(((Steph…follow up on this for me, please)))
In the meantime, you would be most wise to assume that any offer you receive, unsolicited or otherwise, for Fifty-Dollar-Photoshop is a scam. They want your money, your credit-card number, your address, your phone number, your email address, and your faith that they, alone, are actually making good on an offer that seems to good to be true.
Report them, because as fgar as any of us know, they’re ALL BULLSH¡T. Forward the entire message, including all routing headers to
mailto:
Thank you! I assumed that it was just what you said–a scam–and that what they really want is my personal information (address, credit card number, etc.). I wasn’t tempted to order it, but your comments were reassuring.
Ever consider that some of these may be Adobe "stings"?
Jerry
I think there are enough pirates out there without Adobe trying to sting potential purchasers. I suspect their attention is the CD-ROM factories that churn out copies of the program.
And I think that you are wrong. In fact, I will speculate that Adobe shot themselves in the foot when Audition copies were inadvertency shipped with a time de-activcation within them. Check the Auditon forum.
I know people that have purchased the $49.99 specials. In some cases, the product (while acting like a normal version) dropped dead on a specific date. Strangely, some purchasers were never charged (through their credit card) for the "pirate" copies. Interestingly one of the "pirates", that didn’t charge anything, insisted that you take up disallowing any charge for the transaction with him, not your credit card company.
Since they all supply through the US mail system, go ahead and take advantage of their specials. Then, immediately file mail fraud claims with the post office and interstate commerce fraud charges with the FBI (if you don’t live in the same state), and, of course, report it to Adobe, I am sure they will want to know. The reports on the results of the investigations on your claims should be of great interest to you.
Here’s the catch. The site is in another country – usually Russia or somewhere over there. The CD is a copy with the crack. Whatever it is you can’t activate it or register it. The CD is untraceable and will have no return address or a fake one. That’s it. Very simple. I bid on some software on Ebay and immediately got an email from one of these guys pointing me to a web site to order. They sell by the CD for as many programs as they can cram on one. It’s almost impossible to stop them so just ignore them.
The site is in another country
or Florida… same thing. 🙂
