I came across a scam while looking for an old speaker manual. Multiple forums with nonfunctioning ui targeted at different languages/nationalities (based on their url) presented me with identical conversations from random fake users. It begins with someone asking for a manual, someone posts a link, someone posts that its a safe website, and the “admin” closes it with links to the files. the files link to PickAFile which asks for billing information due to “free account abuse.” The website is clearly targeted towards books and not just manuals, so if this is a new scam, I anticipate it affecting many people searching for books online.
I found this scam by searching “dp/n 06941v manual” on Google, and it was not very far down the list and present multiple times on the first page. The offending parties seem to be vBulletin, PickAFile, sieraddns, kinozoo, EspoCRM, and likely many more. Most of the forums have EspoCRM in the header, all of them link to PickAFile, and all of them are based on vBulletin, which may or may not be a legitimate forum hosting site. I do not have the time to investigate further.
I apologize for my formatting, this is my first report.
Thank you.