{"id":963,"date":"2017-03-18T18:36:33","date_gmt":"2017-03-18T18:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/?p=963"},"modified":"2017-06-25T15:58:21","modified_gmt":"2017-06-25T15:58:21","slug":"windows-movie-maker-org-is-a-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/windows-movie-maker-org-is-a-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"windows-movie-maker.org is a scam"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Sorry, that’s much of a punchy title for the first new post in over a year, but the only punching I want to do right now are\u00c2\u00a0ones aimed at the scamming gits behind windows-movie-maker.org.<\/p>\n

Movie Maker is a nice, easy to use video editor that Wibs had on his old laptop. \u00c2\u00a0So we downloaded it, installed it on his new one and he spent a happy hour knocking up his\u00c2\u00a0first movie on the new lappy. \u00c2\u00a0The alarm bells started ringing in the back of my head when it said we needed to buy\u00c2\u00a0a registration code in order to save the video. \u00c2\u00a0I didn’t remember the previous version doing that, but we couldn’t remember if we actually bought it or not. \u00c2\u00a0I think the bit of my brain responsible for memory was damaged when I installed the alarm bells.<\/p>\n

So a quick search later and I discovered that Windows Movie Maker was released by Microsoft as Freeware, and discontinued in January 2017. Freeware means not asking for money, so what the hell did we have on Wibs’ laptop? \u00c2\u00a0It turns out that we had installed it from windows-movie-maker.org. It looked and acted like Movie Maker, but it wasn’t Movie Maker. Searching for the site name is not reassuring. \u00c2\u00a0At best it’s a scam, at worst it infects your computer with malware. \u00c2\u00a0People have paid for a registration code and received nothing, others have had their computer damaged by it, and others have reported malicious-looking files added. \u00c2\u00a0Luckily we installed it on a fairly new PC, so we didn’t lose much when I “nuked it from orbit” and re-installed Windows.<\/p>\n

So, in conclusion and in bold red:<\/p>\n

You do not need to pay for Windows Movie Maker. \u00c2\u00a0If it asks for a registration code, it’s a scam and probably downloaded from windows-movie-maker.org, a scam site. \u00c2\u00a0If you have used the scam version, at the very least run a good malware checker like Malwarebytes or better, re-install Windows.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

There is\u00c2\u00a0a genuine download for Windows Movie Maker<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0which appears to be legit, although I haven’t tried it myself yet. Thanks to John for letting me know.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sorry, that’s much of a punchy title for the first new post in over a year, but the only punching I want to do right now are\u00c2\u00a0ones aimed at the scamming gits behind windows-movie-maker.org. Movie Maker is a nice, easy to use video editor that Wibs had on his old laptop. \u00c2\u00a0So we downloaded it, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geek","category-wibblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=963"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":977,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963\/revisions\/977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}