{"id":28068,"date":"2024-03-17T09:19:24","date_gmt":"2024-03-17T13:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/?p=28068"},"modified":"2024-03-17T09:19:24","modified_gmt":"2024-03-17T13:19:24","slug":"see-we-told-you-so-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/see-we-told-you-so-2\/","title":{"rendered":"See? We Told You So!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 36pt;\">See? We Told You So!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">For years we&#8217;ve been warning our readers about Reimage, Restoro, and all the other useless one-click-fix programs and fake or useless security software being advertised on the Web and social media. You know the ones. The ones that make outrageous claims and promises and use scare tactics to get you to part with your hard-earned money. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Our mission is to help you with your Windows computers &#8212; and to keep you safe on the web. We have warned you multiple (probably too many) times about one-click fix scams like Restoro and Reimagevand off-brand security programs like Guardio, Virus Total, and others.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Over the years we&#8217;ve answered many questions about rip-offs like Restoro and Reimage and other one-click fixes and scam security software. We have saved many of you from being ripped off. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Here is just one example. It&#8217;s a question and answer from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/saturday-bonus-questions-and-answers-120923\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one of our newsletters<\/a>&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Robert asks about a program called Restoro.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">I look to your expertise once again. Do you know of a program called \u201cRestoro\u201d, and if so what are your thoughts?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Our answer<\/span><\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Hi Robert. Restoro uses the same \u201ctechnology\u201d as the scamware program called \u201cReimage\u201d. And I use the word \u201ctechnology\u201d very loosely. Restoro is yet another one-click fixer that supposedly repairs all your Windows problems while you sit back and sip lemonade and read your favorite book.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">As we\u2019ve said at least a hundred times, if such wonderful, one-click-fix technology existed, Microsoft would pay the inventor billions for it and include it with Windows \u2013 can you imagine how many man-hours and how much money would be saved if instead of giving instructions for fixing something, Microsoft only had to say, \u201cJust run MS MiracleFix\u201d. One tip covers all.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Restoro is shady software bordering on a scam. Why a scam? Well, besides the fact that it doesn\u2019t fix all your Windows problems with a click, it claims to be \u201cFree\u201d. It uses the old bait &amp; switch trick. Download Restoro free and run it and check your computer \u201cfree\u201d. Of course, Restoro will \u201cfind\u201d dozens or even hundreds of things wrong with Windows that it can magically fix with one click. But, of course, the fix is not free. You&#8217;ll need to fork over your hard-earned money to fix all the \u201cerrors\u201d it found. Right now it\u2019s $28 for a one-time \u201cfix\u201d and $41 for free \u201cfixes\u201d for a year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Restoro is just another in a long line of one-click fix scams that create intentional false positives to convince users that their systems have problems. Then they try to sell you their software, claiming it will fix these problems.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Customer reviews are generally terrible and harsh. This one from <a href=\"https:\/\/au.sitejabber.com\/reviews\/restoro.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Jabber<\/span><\/a> is typical \u2013 note the response from Restoro.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/images\/2021\/restoro.png\" alt=\"Cloudeight InfoAve\" width=\"594\" height=\"409\" \/><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Restoro is a waste of money and has a place in our hall of shame alongside other infamous one-click-fix scams like Reimage, WinFixer, MyFastPC, and all the others that have come and gone over the years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Save your money, Robert. Don\u2019t fall for the Restoro bait &amp; switch scam.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Finally, after years of chicanery, Restoro and Reimage have been outed by the US Federal Trade Commission and found to be scams &#8211; just like we&#8217;ve been telling you for years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Here&#8217;s part of the PC Mag article about the FTC lawsuit against Restoro and Reimage.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 24pt;\">Fake Antivirus Software Hit With FTC Lawsuit After Raking in Millions<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The US Federal Trade Commission says two antivirus software products, Restoro and Reimage, are actually fake products that have allegedly conned buyers out of &#8220;ten of millions&#8221; of dollars, according to a lawsuit filed by the government agency.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">FTC investigators reportedly went undercover and bought the allegedly malicious software four times. They found that in all instances, the software lied, telling them that they had a host of viruses and security issues on their computers when in actuality, they did not. 404Media and Court Watch first reported the news.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">One Restoro scan told the FTC that it supposedly had a staggering 522 issues with their test computer that needed repair. A Reimage scan found 1,244 so-called &#8220;issues,&#8221; which the software described as &#8220;PC privacy issues,&#8221; &#8220;junk files,&#8221; &#8220;crashed programs,&#8221; and &#8220;broken registry issues.&#8221; But these issues were actually just part of an effort to sell buyers bogus &#8220;repair&#8221; tools, according to the complaint.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Upon installation, the software prompted the user to call a phone number to &#8220;activate&#8221; the software. But the FTC argues that this is also a part of the scheme, as the phone call sends users to a person who tries to further upsell the customer on more computer &#8220;repair services&#8221; over the phone, the lawsuit alleges.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The FTC says the software programs, which both come from the same location in Cyprus, have effectively deceived customers out of &#8220;tens of millions&#8221; of dollars. So many customers demanded refunds through credit card chargebacks that Reimage was added to a risk-monitoring program in 2019. Many others filed complaints online, saying the products are a scam.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">In 2020, Visa also alleged that the individuals behind the software are engaging in &#8220;fraudulent behavior,&#8221; the suit states. Visa subsequently put one of the companies connected to Restoro on a watch list in 2021 because of the high number of buyer chargeback requests.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/fake-antivirus-software-hit-with-ftc-lawsuit-after-raking-in-millions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Read the rest of this PC Mag article here&#8230;<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 24pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">We&#8217;ve got your back&#8230;<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The FTC brought the hammer down on Restoro and Reimage &#8211; and hopefully, it won&#8217;t be long for them to catch all the others out there trying to rip you off.\u00a0 There are a lot of scams going on and a lot of useless software, even dangerous, being aggressively promoted on the Web and social media. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">We&#8217;ve been doing this for a long time and we want you to know that <strong>we&#8217;ve always had your back and we always will<\/strong>. Our mission is, and always has been to help you with your computer &#8211; and to help keep you safe on the web. We may not be raking in millions like the thieves and scammers do,<strong> <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thundercloud.net\/donation.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">but with your help<\/a><\/span><\/strong>, we will continue to do our best to keep you safe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thundercloud.net\/donation.htm\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"auto-style799\" src=\"https:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/images\/2024\/springdrive24.png\" alt=\"Help us help you! \" width=\"470\" height=\"153\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><strong><span class=\"auto-style1\">Our Spring Donation Drive is Underway!<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"auto-style809\"><strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/thundercloud.net\/donation.htm\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Make a small donation and help us to keep on helping you!<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Our annual spring donation drive is underway. Sales of our products and services help keep the lights on at Cloudeight.\u00a0 But if you don\u2019t need any of our products or services right now, please help us with a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">donation. Even the smallest gift is appreciated. Every donation helps us to provide useful information that helps you with your computer as well as helps us to keep you safe on the Internet. We offer free help to thousands of people every year\u2026 and we offer an honest and inexpensive computer repair service too. We do everything we can to help you with your computer and to help you stay safe too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">So, if you don\u2019t need any of our products or services right now, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/donation.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> please consider helping us with a small donation<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thundercloud.net\/donation.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> <span class=\"auto-style809\"><strong>Please help us by donating right now<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Interested in making a monthly gift? <a href=\"https:\/\/thundercloud.net\/gift\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Visit this page<\/span><\/a>. Help us keep helping you!<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"auto-style809\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><strong>Thank you so much for your support!\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; See? We Told You So! For years we&#8217;ve been warning our readers about Reimage, Restoro, and all the other useless one-click-fix programs and fake or useless security software being advertised on the Web and social media. You know the ones. The ones that make outrageous claims and promises and use scare tactics to get you to part\u2026 <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/see-we-told-you-so-2\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1669,1680],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28068"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28068"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28078,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28068\/revisions\/28078"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}