"Unknownsecret" Scam Warning
Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2015 3:45 pm
Okay, I've seen quite a few BoC fakes over the years, but this is the first one that I've seen which crosses over into being actively malicious. Sure, with most of the others you could download a zip claiming to be Hooper Bay and find out that it's full of Múm, but you didn't really lose anything other than some time and joy. This takes it to a whole new level. Allow me to introduce to you all a site calling itself "Unknown Secret". I came across it while googling "Boards Of Canada Hooper Bay". I will be providing screenshots so that you don't have to waste your bandwidth on this. Anyways, this is the first thing I saw when going through google search results:
Spoilered due to large images:
It's understandable that at this point any Boards fan's heart would be racing after seeing that despite their brain telling them to be skeptical. However, before I show you what happens when you actually click on any of these I'd like to draw some attention to their front page:
Again, spoilered due to large image:
Now that we've crossed the line from BoC-like to straight up ridiculous, let's take a look at what happens when you attempt to actually download something:
Looks pretty spiffy, no? Well, things aren't always as they seem. A cursory look at the source code by anyone even moderately familiar with web design will show that this is not actually an Apache/2 server as claimed. It's a fake site meant to look like one. If this isn't already setting off any alarm bells, take a look at what happened when I attempted to download Seward Leaf:
(Ignore the LastPass bit, that's just part of a browser extension) Okay, I need an account. And what do they want me to do in order to set up an account?
Final spoiler due to large images:
At this point I bailed out because sites like this that try to get you to give them your personal details for a survey never actually have the promised goods. Anyways, I thought that you should all be aware of this scam's existence so that you don't end up getting your hopes up like I did, or even worse actually giving these people your personal details in the hope that you might be able to download the 5 pre-Twoism albums.
Spoilered due to large images:
- Spoiler: show
It's understandable that at this point any Boards fan's heart would be racing after seeing that despite their brain telling them to be skeptical. However, before I show you what happens when you actually click on any of these I'd like to draw some attention to their front page:
Again, spoilered due to large image:
- Spoiler: show
Now that we've crossed the line from BoC-like to straight up ridiculous, let's take a look at what happens when you attempt to actually download something:
Looks pretty spiffy, no? Well, things aren't always as they seem. A cursory look at the source code by anyone even moderately familiar with web design will show that this is not actually an Apache/2 server as claimed. It's a fake site meant to look like one. If this isn't already setting off any alarm bells, take a look at what happened when I attempted to download Seward Leaf:
(Ignore the LastPass bit, that's just part of a browser extension) Okay, I need an account. And what do they want me to do in order to set up an account?
Final spoiler due to large images:
- Spoiler: show
At this point I bailed out because sites like this that try to get you to give them your personal details for a survey never actually have the promised goods. Anyways, I thought that you should all be aware of this scam's existence so that you don't end up getting your hopes up like I did, or even worse actually giving these people your personal details in the hope that you might be able to download the 5 pre-Twoism albums.