"Easy Fast Help", Prolast, "Download Provider" And, Apparently, Many Other Names And I thought I was signing up for a trial so that I could download one particular song. Internet
I wanted to download one particular song. A Google search for the song didn't have any hits for sources I recognized, like iTunes. The only credible looking hit was with dll-provider.com. I decided getting the song was worth the cost of a trial membership ($4.87).
Little did I know that I was signing up with a very unscrupulous outfit that offers illegal downloads of copyrighted material. To add insult to injury, they didn't really even have the song I'd searched so hard for. I was a little suspicious as I signed up because I noticed that a box for also subscribing to another website was pre-checked, but I unchecked it, so I thought I was okay. WRONG!
The site I signed up with turns out to be affiliated with porn sites (same ownership, I believe) and tried to charge me for memberships with those sites too. Luckily for me, I was protected against most of those charges by something I STRONGLY RECOMMEND OTHERS CONSIDER:
One of my VISA cards offers the ability to set up virtual sub-accounts. On the credit card company's website, you enter the name of the merchant to whom you need to give a credit card, the total amount that you authorize to be charged, and how long the card should be valid. A virtual credit card, with it's own 16-digit account number, it's own security code, and the credit and expiration date you've chosen.
I've been using this for a while -- any time I need to give a merchant I haven't dealt with before my credit card number. For this one, I set a $20 limit, but after I found out they'd made attempts of $39 charges (which didn't go through because they would have pushed the balance above the limit I set), I was able to lower the limit to $10. If I had given them the actual credit card number, the charges would have totalled well over $100.
AJ
Boston metro, Massachusetts
U.S.A.