I just got an unusual email from victor.vlad@perion.com

At first it doesn’t seem unusual, he says he’s from codefuel.com, a division of perion.com

he started off saying:

I’m contacting you to discuss a possible partnership between CodeFuel and your company.

CodeFuel offers a free software monetization service, including:

* Search Monetization: Get paid per user with our SearchFuel solutions.
* Smart Installer: Monetize software with the InstallFuel recommendation engine.
* Advanced Analytics: Analyze data, traffic & boost revenues with our Control Center.

Yep, it all sounds vague, yet interesting enough to get a software developer interested in getting money for software.

Hovering my mouse over some of the links in the email shows that the links point to a conduit.com portal.

In this day and age, it pays to be suspicious, and since the only address I recognise is conduit.com (from my experience in helping customers with computers bogged down with junk software (ie its not virus/spyware/malware, but it gets in the way of using the computer the way it should be used), I know that conduit should be avoided at almost any cost.

So rather than click on any links, I decide to go directly to perion.com and codefuel.com

at perion.com, I see mention of software like:

• incredimail
• smilebox
• sweetim
• molto
• photojoy

and various other junk software.

So now I know for sure:

Stay away from perion.com and codefuel.com

As far as I’m concerned, based on all the negative experience I (and many of my customers) have had with incredimail alone, I know that this leopard might have changed its spots, but its still something you should stay well away from.

You have been warned!