Fake Software Store Imitate Groupon

Fake software stores often claim to offer huge discounts, not unlike the well-known site Groupon. So it should not be a surprise that some of these fake stores look exactly like Groupon in an effort to be more familiar to the users and increase the likelihood of being trusted. One of these fake stores is axisoftware.com.

Here are screenshots of Groupon and identical looking pages on axisoftware.com.

Groupon: select a city

axisoftware.com: home page (top)

Groupon: daily deal

axisoftware.com: home page (center)

The fake site does not work very well. Clicking on the Buy button on the home page didn't actually do anything. I had to first click on the "deal" and then the "buy" button before reaching the shopping cart.

axisoftware.com:checkout

After entering my e-mail address, I was redirected to a payment website at lpstore.ws. Payment by VISA card then redirects to feriensoft.com. Mastercard is handled by screensavera.com.

Fake payment site

Lately, there has been a lot more activity around fake stores than around Fake AV, which used to me the most dominant threat in the Blackhat SEO world. There are currently thousands of spam websites redirecting to this particular fake Groupon store appearing in search engine results.

-- Julien