They may have died a death on the high street but Zavvi are still going strong online. And right now, they have 2 very special offers.

First up, is the Belkin TuneCast II Mobile FM Transmitter. This plugs into your MP3 player or mobile phone and transmits on an FM frequency that you can pick up on your radio – this is particularly useful in your car.

Zavvi are currently selling this for £5.95 (while stocks last), which includes free delivery. I’ve just bought one myself!

Secondly, they are selling the Navman S100 Spirit 3D GPS for £89.99. To put this into context, Halfords sells it for £199.99 and Tesco for £149.97. Again, delivery is free.

Now, I don’t mind being asked to review products – indeed I positively ask for it. However, as it’s a free service, I would at least expect a little bit of effort from those making the request.

So, step forward Digiarty Software, who asked me to review their two latest products – a free iPod media converter and a free DVD to iPod ripper. Which would be good, if I actually owned an iPod. Besides, the email missed one essential detail – any kind of link to the product or their website. A quick “Google” found it though.

Having said that, lines in the email such as “Here May I request a review of  these software on your web?” doesn’t bode well. Was I really sent an email from “Sophia”?¹

Now, their website is very professional, which always makes me wonder why software is being given away free, especially when I can see they have an affiliate program. In this case, they also sell commercial software, which is their money maker. However, there’s something about them that doesn’t sit right.

There are spelling and grammatical errors throughout the site and their “Privacy Policy” page has obviously been ripped from the Intel website. Unless they meant to write…

This policy covers the Intel Corporate website and is applicable worldwide.

Their is no reference to where they are based, although the site contains many examples of “broken English”. Who would buy from a site with such a lack of identity? Indeed, when installing the software the copyright notice makes mention of being “protected by United Kingdom copyright laws”. This is then followed up by “The sole owner of this product is Digiarty Software, Inc.” I didn’t think that UK companies used the “Inc.” suffix?

So, next thing to do – look up the website in popular “checkers”. First up, the McAfee Site Advisor. This shows no problems with the downloads, and a contact country of the US. Next, Browser Defender shows much the same, but this time the US is identified as the location of the server. However, the contact is rather different.

HanZhicai
ZhiCai (softsupport@vip.sina.com)
+86.2885258636

I wish I knew where this contact information was sourced from, because a WHOIS lookup doesn’t provide anything of use (the contact information appears to be protected). However, the above name doesn’t appear on other sites, making reference to the aforementioned software.

Sorry, but I’m not going any further. If I’m going to download and install some “free” software, I need to be able to feel the source is trustworthy. In this case, I don’t.

1. curiously, it was a Sophia who contacted me to review EASEUS software a while ago. Hmmm [↩]