Were Lavasoft's buyers once on its hit list?
Shining a light on Solaria acquisition
Anti-spyware company Lavasoft AB is now owned by a set of online entrepreneurs who have been linked with misleading websites.
The Montreal-based entrepreneurs, who purchased the company's assets in January, have previously been accused of selling the free versions of Lavasoft products to unwitting internet users as recently as 2007 via cyber-squatting sites.
Lavasoft, originally based in Sweden, was purchased by an investment fund called Solaria in January, but no other holdings can be found for Solaria. In fact, the only ties that Solaria has are to the founders of Upclick, an affiliate marketing company. The founders of this company have also founded companies that sold online porn, reskinned peer-to-peer filesharing software, and allegedly "
skimmed" online sales, charging customers for software that they did not order.
Solaria bought Lavasoft on 18 January 2011. Its
listing in Businessweek reveals that it began operating as a subsidiary of Lulu Software after the acquisition, and is now also known as LVS Software. Lulu Software is registered as
7270356 Canada Inc in Montreal (4-page PDF/163KB).
Its major shareholder is a corporation called 7104189 Canada (1-page PDF/191KB), whose directors are Charles Dadoun and Daniel Assouline – also the directors of affiliate marketing company Upclick.
Shortly after the acquisition, other evidence of links between Lavasoft and UpClick began to surface. Calin Ioan Udrea, the former director of marketing for UpClick, relisted himself on LinkedIn as the director of marketing for Lavasoft in February.
Bad boys done good?
Dadoun and Assouline have a long history when it comes to internet marketing. They are also the men behind Interactive Brands, an affiliate marketing firm listed as the registrant of multiple domains linked to fraudulent activity, including spyware, and fake geneology sites. Interactive Brands was selling Lavasoft's Ad-Aware in 2007 using a variety of domains, including adaware-ib.com. This domain was listed in a Rip-off Report complaint by a customer who found the site in a web search, purchased Ad-Aware through it, and who said that he was charged for extra software that he did not ask for.
Interactive Brands also operated sites that drew attention from legitimate players in other markets. One was searchyourgeneology.com, which was reported by legitimate geneology site Ancestry.com in 2008. Ancestry.com said, in a 2008 post: "Potential customers are lured to purchase under what we feel to be false, misleading and deceitful promotional material, and get little or no value out of money spent at the websites. Blog and message board posts from the community confirm this opinion."
Read more
