Unbelievable.

FSLabs included a password cache software with their software which collected users' google passwords and uploaded them plaintext HTTP to an unsecured server in Germany. They claim it was to combat piracy. The illegality of this is mindboggling. I suspect some of FSLabs's staff is going to go to jail for this.

I bought a product from them in September. Never again. Who knows if they have been including other malware with their other products.

It makes me think Lefteris was the one behind the MD-11 nuke which created a huge scandal at PMDG years ago.

Very, very shady business practice, shame on you FSLabs.

Wow that is bad

Incredibly stupid.

they only join a growing corporate and government crowd like Equifax, Target, Yahoo, OPM (the Office of Personnel Management of the U.S. govt), Wells Fargo, etc who have acted in careless or purposeful manner and as such have undermined the public trust in keeping their personal identifiable information (PII) safe

Hag, I think the difference is that these folks were not just negligent. They deliberately included malware to steal passwords from customers with a legitimate product, then they transmitted the stolen data over unsecure HTTP onto an unsecure server.

I don't know how Lefteris is going to avoid jail time for this one. Incidentally, shortly after my FSLabs purchase, my credit card got fraudulent usages originating in the UK which is somewhere I've never been. It could have been a coincidence but I am guessing that FSLabs had something to do with this.

Is piracy really that hurtful to these software developers to warrant such an attack on all of it's customers? I've always thought of these pirates as people who would not have bought the software, anyway. So there was really no loss of revenue. I'm naive, possibly, I suppose.
The damage done to their reputation far outwieghs any supposed damage done by pirates. I haven't bought any of their stuff, but if I had I'd want it uninstalled. It's amazing to see that they said they would never do anything to damage the trust their customers have put in their products. They already have! They seem to feel that they were justified. It's like the police breaking into your house in the middle of the night and rummaging through your belongings to see if you're a thief. You wake up and catch them and they say, "Oh don't worry, if we don't find anything illegal, it's fine!"

Avsim and FSLabs are currently censoring discussion about the issue on their forums - almost everything related to this is being erased. Looks like they're trying to run a cleanup job. I'm not one for conspiracies, but avsim's censorship is pretty shady. They need to let this run its course.

I wonder how much identity theft occurred here - piracy or not, identity theft is very, very illegal just about everywhere.

Someone needs to hit them with a lawsuit right away before they have time to bury it all and some lawyers can get in there for discovery.

Exactly. Far different.

As always, it is the paying customer that is the victim of these anti-piracy tactics.

In this case, the victim might have had their banking credentials, among other accounts, stolen. This is a bit beyond protecting a product.

Doesn't matter. When the "victim" is the legit customer, something's wrong with that scenario IMHO.