They lure people in with the promise of free movies. And, in fact, it seems like on at least a few of them, you really can find (stolen) first run Hollywood movies. The reality, though, is that these sites are mostly honeypots - designed to capture usernames, passwords, and credit card numbers.
Technically savvy users know: if you're going to steal a movie - BitTorrent is the place to do it. Nobody searches the web anymore in hopes of finding a good streamable stolen movie. At least not the smart ones don't. For the rest: there is plethora of honey pots online - attracting users with the promise of free movies. And what's amazing: these sites look good. It's easy to rip off HTML and the designs for many sites are remarkably simple. Indeed, I started to recognize the look and feel fo the phoney sites after a while.
So, how do tell if a site is a honeypot? Well, real web sites have sections like "About Us". The feature pictures of the entrepreneurs, contact information, and even mission statements. They have legalese and terms and conditions that you don't see - yet - with the fake sites. And some of this is hard to fake - at least in a way that's original.
Sadly, I'm sure we can look forward even more realistic fake web sites as consumers wise up to con artists online.
Sites like Cinamuse and Cinemaden (pictured below) look great online, but scam websites contain warnings about them. I was afraid enough given those notes to not even try to register and find out more. You can see, however, how professional these sites do look:
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