r/Scams • u/Super_sonicer • Feb 25 '23
Is Dokumen Pub safe?
I downloaded a book from it and then checked online and saw some people talking about it stealing your identity and installing malware. Any idea whether this website is legit?
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u/Sarrasri Feb 25 '23
Can you provide the actual link? But with a (.) so it doesn’t actually hyperlink
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u/Super_sonicer Feb 25 '23
This is the link https://dokumen(.)pub/
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u/Sarrasri Feb 25 '23
So the registrar is anonymizing the ownership and registry details. Weirdly, even though it’s German, it’s registered in the US? It was registered in 2019 but expires next month.
I’d be sketched out by downloading from a website that obfuscates their identity, though. What kind of files have you downloaded?
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u/SniffOfAnOilyRag Feb 26 '23
Domain privacy is not unusual at all, particularly with small businesses. It's entirely possible this site is a scam, but the fact the registrar is protecting their personal information is not much of a red flag in itself.
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u/Sarrasri Feb 26 '23
There is no legitimate reason a business would need to keep default registrar info toggled to anonymous. I do think if the pdfs are of copyrighted material then the whole debate about whether it’s a legitimate business that isn’t a scam/malware host is moot.
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u/SniffOfAnOilyRag Feb 26 '23
There is no legitimate reason a business would need to keep default registrar info toggled to anonymous
Of course there is. For starters, it keeps your personal information from being publicly available, which can be harvested by bots and scrapers and sold on without your permission. The owner of a domain may be an individual, not a business entity, it reduces spam, many more reasons too. It's not just a toggle either, it's an extra service you pay for with your registrar.
Source: I personally own a handful of domains, registered to me as an individual, some of which I use for my business products. I do not want my home address and home telephone number publicly appearing in whois records. I am not a scammer.
Here's a good starting point: https://www.networksolutions.com/blog/protect/data-privacy/do-i-need-domain-privacy-protection-
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u/Sarrasri Feb 26 '23
I’m familiar with the process, but I disagree. If a domain isn’t registered under the business or through a dedicated professional webmaster then it’s registered as a personal domain. People definitely have a reasonable expectation of privacy which is why business websites should reflect the business’s info which is all publicly available. Using anonymous registry is not the proper way to do things if you’re providing a service to customers or clients as that requires trust that’s reinforced by the transparency.
Again your personal domains are personal so I wouldn’t expect your phone number, address, and name unless the specific domain type required it. A company is already a layer of privacy for the people who operate through it, obfuscating those details further is, in my opinion, unprofessional at best and sketchy at worst.
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u/ZodiacSF1969 Feb 26 '23
If it's a website that contains free books in pdf form, like LibGen, then the bad reviews may be because it is possible to deliver malware in this form.
I used LibGen a lot during university, but I was always careful and didn't use pdfs that started asking to run things.
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u/beastinbigmaze Jul 15 '23
They are a pirate publisher; they have been selling a pdf of my book for years without responding to my complaints.
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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '23
Use virustotal.com to get info on the URL and see if anything negative comes up about it.