Dodgy Software Sales Websites

Buying a Win 10 key + an office key (if for latest versions) for $40 means you are buying “illegal” keys, they may work once, they may not work, they may work several times. It is a risk and MS do block keys they become aware of that are being misused.

That said there is still a way to get legal Win 10 keys both Home & Pro versions without paying. Once you get the legal keys make sure you (if you don’t already have) create a MS account. Then using the PC log into that account at least once and MS will associate that key with that machine. If in the future you have to upgrade that PC to the point that it is no longer recognised as a licenced machine, you reinstall Win 10 then log into the MS account and transfer the licence to the upgraded PC. My licenced (free) PCs

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In the early months of 2019 I purchased an activation key
for Microsoft Office Professional Pro 2019 from SoftwareProWorld.Com,
based in the UK, who claim to be seller of cheap software and claim to
have been in business since 2017. I paid around $50. The price of that
software from SoftwareDepot in Australia, a legitimate seller of
software, is approximately $800.00. The software worked until Thursday
of this week (May 2021) when I received a message from Microsoft that I
had been the victim of software counterfeiting and I needed to purchase
a legitimate version of MS Office.

Microsoft are seeking to entice users to buy a subscription model, with
an annual payment required. Until recently that model included Publisher
and Access, but now to get those software items a Business subscription
is required and the fee is around $250 annually. The cheapest version is
around $90 annually.

I purchased a legitimate version of Microsoft Office Home and Student
2019 from SoftwareDepot for $96.80. I don’t wish to purchase an annual
subscription. This entitles me to Word and Excel, but not Publisher or
Access, which I have never used anyway.

I was obviously stupid for dealing with a dodgy UK company, but at least
I have not lost any of my work on my computer. I should have taken
notice of the old saying if the price is too good to be true it probably is.

Of course there are free alternatives to Microsoft software, like
LibreOffice, which includes a word processor, a calculator package
similar to Excel, and a database similar to Access, but I chose not to
install these. There is also the Linux operating system, but it is not
widely used.

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Welcome @jamesa.
Interesting story. I am not sure it is counterfeit MS software but dodgy license keys.
They were very commonplace in days past.

I stopped paying for MS office a long time ago. I used Open Office on Windows but have switched to Libre Office now. Do yourself a favour and try it. It is free.

As for Linux, everything you need is there for free too. Ubuntu is my pick and run it on my other laptop.

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Still there but it is only on the PC install.

"

  • Microsoft Access logo. Access (PC only) Easily create and manage databases for projects, large or small.

  • Microsoft Publisher logo. Publisher (PC only) Create everything from simple greetings cards and labels to professional newsletters and posters."

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Hi @jamesa, welcome to the community.

This should immediately raised alarm bells as if a price is too good to be true, usually it means it isn’t true.

Microsoft manage their licensing closely and while there can be reasonable discounts from some onsellers, getting a 90%+ discount is impossible.

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My experience in 2018.

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My comments are general and not Microsoft specific.

There are a number of dodgy sellers who offers keys that are for

  • time limited trials of software
  • corporate licenses good for X number of installs that eventually might get caught up
  • ‘family packs’ often good for 3-5 installs
  • unlimited (actual or practical) licenses that are rarely if ever caught
  • individual keys that have been ‘stolen’ and won’t even register
  • OEM keys that only work on a specific vendors computers often only on specific models.

It is sometimes possible to buy legitimate licenses for old versions of software that will go out of support comparatively early. For purists, an analogy would be a ‘box’ of Office 2010 sitting on a shop shelf nobody wants and is marked down.

For Windows this site may provide useful guidance.

There does not seem to be a similar site for Office, and Office is more convoluted as there are versions sold as one time purchases as well as the newer subscription model although there are ways (version dependent) to check the expiration date if one applies. This MS site has some answers for the curious for the 365 version.

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AFAIK you can still buy a version of Office (I bought Home & Student 2016) and keep that for a long as you want to avoid annual subscriptions.

But you have to be careful - my laptop died and I could not re-install my Office 2013 product as it was a download rather than a CD.

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Always keep a backup, and then a backup of the backup :wink:

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Some of these are good alternatives to the Microsoft suite, depending on use and requirements. Many are covered here…

I used to be a long time Microsoft Office user and found that one pays for many things I didn’t really need (a lot of functionality within say Word which was never used when leaving past employment). We find that the open source/free versions meet almost all our needs, and when it doesn’t, we usually find that there are workarounds (such as temporarily using another free suite that does)…or work out that we don’t need to really use it.

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Um, quick sanity check, how do you know that this message is not the scam? If you have reason to believe that it is genuine then maybe you can contact Microsoft support for confirmation.

If I received this message out of the blue, I would call it a scam. :wink:

Maybe they sold you some kind of limited-time, trial licence. At that price it may be cheaper to get scammed again i.e. cheaper than paying Microsoft annually. (This comment not to be taken too seriously.)

This isn’t really relevant though. You can run LibreOffice under Microsoft Windows. Whether you want to do that probably depends on how sophisticated your needs are (e.g. are you frequently using incredibly niche whizz-bang features that either don’t exist in LibreOffice or aren’t compatible with Microsoft Office?) and how much interoperability with other people you require (e.g. if you are mainly creating documents for your own personal purposes then you don’t care whether the same document works with Microsoft Office v. if your employment requires collaborative working on documents and everyone else is using Microsoft Office then you will eventually run into trouble with a document - but then in that case your employer should be paying for a valid Microsoft Office licence for you).

There are other topics in this forum that explore these issues in more detail.

If you count the Android operating system inside a gazillion phones then Linux is the most commonly used operating system in the world. :wink:

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Perhaps stepping in, I considered that

implied the software stopped working as I interpreted it. Perhaps that interpretation was an overstep. If it did not stop working (eg Microsoft did not disable the installation) yours is an insightful take.

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Either way, if this is a legitimate demand by Microsoft for payment then it doesn’t hurt to confirm that via some offline means.

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The message was not a scam. It was a request from Microsoft to install genuine Microsoft products. I did purchase a dodgy product. Microsoft took two years to deactivate my Microsoft Office, which is amazing, but perhaps they are now doing this more often.

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Our Office 2016 copies are only downloads and I have had no problems downloading it from the MS Office website to reinstall it.

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Thanks to @Fred123’s reminder,

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As they become aware of licences that have been stolen, copied and shared, pirated in other words they have a system where the licence is added to a database and checked when updates are accessed.

They can take a bit of time before MS actually determine when a licence has been misused, in your case 2 years. Just as a further complication the licence may have been legit but purchased in place where the usage was only for that locale eg Russia.

Russian licences for MS products are often very cheap compared to Australia. If MS become aware of this type of usage they will also block that key until the owner is able to confirm they still reside in the required locale or that they have moved from that locale since buying the product.

Anyway if you pay peanuts for a current MS product that normally here costs a lot more, you are buying a non legit product. There is a risk that the product key will not work immediately or it may take some time for it to fail which could vary from days to years.

Win 10 they are softer on but for the others MS is very strict.

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You could always consider Office 2019 from a reputable dealer. Then again, dark mode is coming soon to Office 2016 so that’ll keep me happy for a while. (I also for some reason prefer Office Professional, but there are plenty of legitimate deals that will enable you to buy that for a reasonable price.)

I also still have my Office 97 box/CDs/manual sitting on the shelf in case of Y2K.

This is because you are no longer the operating system customer, but the product; Microsoft expects to make money from users of Windows 10 through its store and through advertising/search.

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Welcome to the forum.

I have moved your post and replies to an existing relevant thread about similar experiences. There is also similar discussion on another thread counterfeit products on eBay and Amazon.

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I am sorry if this has been answered and I missed it but how can you check before buying if a vendor is selling genuine keys?

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