I've experienced this with gigantic download buttons. Took me several seconds of scanning the page to realise the huge green download button was the real thing and not a scam ad as they usually are.
Gotcha. Yeah, I see one there. Big green button with a down arrow saying "GET IT NOW" lots of whitespace below and then a smallish rewaterpressure logo. Because of the whitespace, the button very much looked associated with the paint.net download text above, not with the rewaterpressure logo below.
I also received the less bad (but still bad) text-based "start download now" one the same page. You convinced me. Editing my parent post above.
EDIT: for those curious, here's what the page looked like on the page load mentioned above: http://imgur.com/SisOXNT
Especially when you consider that the ad networks those sites are using are rather sketchy. Many of the ads there try to trick you into believing they're the actual download link
Definitely a darker shade of grey IMHO. Reminds me of the SourceForge ads shown on the download pages that have a big green "download" button. The ads usually display before the actual download button appears, and more than once I have accidentally clicked on it.
I end up angry and remembering NOT to deal with whoever was responsible for the ad.
However the difference I see to patio11's tactic is that in his case, people are searching for something educationally related and he gives them something related. That's different than me expecting to download a Java library and getting an anti-virus software page. So, still deception and therefore dark-grey, but not as blatant of deception as the ads on SourceForge.
It's probably the colors and button designs that really resemble the design of Mediafire and other download sites that are used for suspicious purposes?
I clicked one of the legitimate downloads. The link takes you to a new page and waits a few seconds before starting the download.
The most prominent element of this page, centered just below the header, is a large bright green "Start Download" button. That button is part of an advertisement, but is blatantly designed to get the majority of its clicks from users who intended to download software from the project hosted on SF. I see it as a malicious download.
I realize you may have been referring specifically to the recent SF malware bundling, but I want to stress that this ad came up for me on my first try clicking one of those links. Ad's like that have been regular on SF for years; it's impossible to believe that they have made it a priority to prevent them. The opposite seems more likely: the page design minimizes the legitimate controls and emphasizes the scam link.
Even if I know the installer is free of opt out malware I would hesitate to send a SF link to a friend or family member. The clearest call to action they are likely to see is a malicious download impersonating the software they want.
While the Premium button is immediately available and the other isn't, they have both the same size, and furthermore it's made very clear from the prominent comparison table that there was a Free version and the differences between the two. How exactly is this hidden?
Is the Premium version slightly more prominent? Sure. But calling it "tricking people" is misrepresenting it completely, in my opinion.
I don't see any misleading links at all. It takes more clicks than it should to actually get to the download, but there was nothing malicious on any of the pages.
I always use these guys to find torrents and after trying other alternatives, I now realize how spammy and deceiving they all are. With download buttons that lead to malware sites.
I'm not so sure about that, the way the browser vendors and companies beat it into their user's heads to look for the green bar with the company name on it.
Granted, it's still a scam. "Pay us money or all your customer's browsers will get scary and misleading error messages!"
It doesn't seem to be as bad now, but there are definitely ads there. IIRC to download the desktop version you have to click trough 3 pages, and each used to have at least one ad only saying "download now" that looked like a convincing button.
I've seen it on many free download sites (not that I visited any of them). You click to download a file (enticing!), and you get a splash page of many questionable ads. I'm sure there is some cost sharing involved.
PlantUML looks great, all the features I need, but their page is infested with fake ads, including fake download buttons of 5 different kinds. They also link to download page on SourceForge (hmmm, it's still alive) with even worse ads. Maybe it just me, but I immediately lost any desire to try it.
I just googled "download skype for mac" without the quotes and an ad for the mentioned site was the first result. Another non-skype site's ad was second, and the first real result was the expected download page on skype's website. I could see a lot of people falling for that.
I recently tried to search for certain Nintendo 64 ROMs because I wanted to try out an emulator. The first couple of results on Google all lead to horrible, ad-infested websites that claimed to offer a download but either kept on redirecting me to more ad-filled sites, or tried to get me to download some sort of "download helper", "media codec" or "PC cleaning software". Then there were the sites with dozens of fake "Download" buttons surrounding the real one. I'm still not sure whether any of them actually offer any ROM downloads (I found trustworthy sites on the second page of the results).
It's no wonder that many users struggle to keep their PCs free of adware, toolbars and similar junk, when it is shoveled into your face every step of the way.
There was a warning box/advertisement at the bottom of the page that my download manager is out of date, with an X to close the box. But it's not an X, it's just pixels, and clicking it pops up a window to download a download manager.
Which makes everything at this site suspect and not worth reading.
Well the first thing I see is two banner ads, one of them being a VPN. The next thing I see is three "system optimizers", two of which I know are garbage.
I guess that's not too far from late Download.com energy, but I'd caution you about using it further.
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