Fellow scambuster Jim Dunn has alerted me to a new trend of AVI scammers.
If you get an AVI file which shows you this message:
This is, off course, just another variation of the 3wPlayer scam. The same people responsible for 3wPlayer scam has added another trick to their bag. They’re double-encoding 3wPlayer files and calling them DivoCodec.
In other words, the scammers are too lazy to invent a new scam format. They’re just using their old tools twice on the same file, this time appending a new image to the AVI.
WARNING:
In case you are new to all this: do not under any circumstances download the ‘codec’. In fact, don’t even go to that website mentioned. The codec contains malicious spyware for sure, and the website might record your IP address and target you for hacking.
Bittorrent users with a bit of experience know this, off course. They’ve seen the 3wPlayer scam before, and the Vodei scam before that.
Solution:
Jim discovered if that if you run this AVI file thorugh UnZixWin 0.0.9,
you get a standard 3wPlayer encoded file. Running that through UnZixWin
0.0.9 will get you the original, unencoded file. Off course, that may not be the one you were promised (april fools!), but any old AVI which seemed large enough to be plausible.
In short, use UnZixWin twice and see what you get.
Thanks, Jim!