Some of you who have searched for software to backup your files may have come across handybackup.com or handybackup.net. I knew about these two sites for a while but haven't made purchase until recently. And I ended up doing some research on these two.

If you look at these two sites, you will notice they look similar and sell the same product. At first you will think they are one company with 2 websites. This is not the case. One is a fake and illegal operation. You will notice they both post same images and award logos. They both have same name, same product thumbnail, and same features and same message in all their pages.

So how do we find out who is legitimate and who isn't? You will notice handybackup.com lists itself as Novosoft Inc. and handybackup.net lists itself as Novosoft LLC. So far everything looks so much similar. There MUST be a way to find out if a website is fake in cases like this. I first ran google search and found a blog that didn't really help. It simply displayed email responce from one of the two sites. When you email a website whether it be fake or legitimate they will always claim the legitimacy. This is why you have to do the research yourself and dig deep.

I knew common sense says whoever came first is legitimate and who came second is copy. So I ran whois (this is to display website info and owner and contact data) on namesecure.com. I found that handybackup.com is registered by a guy in TX, USA. while handybackup.net was registered by someone in Russia (typically this is the first hint, but not a guarantee) But the proof was in the date. I looked at the creation date (Date of which the websites were purchased and created). handybackup.com was created in 2001 prior to handybackup.net that's in Russia. This was the proof I needed.

People are still buying software from both sites even though handybackup.net is fake AND more expensive. Why? because people do strange things. Next time you purchase software from websites, compare not only the quality and pricing and customer reviews and ratings but, also check to make sure they are not pirated software vendors.

Stop molesting yourself and get that hand out of your pocket.