Email from Ansys

[aaa577aaa]

Hello forum,

this is not a request for something to do, it's well explained all over this forum, just want to share a case and add some considerations.

Timeline:

Contacted by a sale representative of Ansys by email (contacts taken from internet website and social networks), located in Europe, attaching a pdf letter intimating the illegal use of Ansys for several years, asking to review the letter in 7 days.

Nothing to hide, I consider myself a polite person, I replied denying all and asking for what he called "evidence".

He asked for a meeting, this was denied, I have no time to waste.

After some more exchange of emails he sent a single log line (saying it was part of the full log) with an ip address, geographical coordinates and an image of google maps.

Replied one more time, last time, reiterating what I were writing in previous emails.

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Now waiting for a contact from solicitors, and of course all future communications will be ignored.

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Considerations:

- In my specific case the ip address is not belonging to me (their target)

- Even if the ip address was mine, it's not even relevant in a possible lawsuit; there are very serious past cases in my Country, not relevant to copyright, which stated that it's not possible to link a person to an ip address

- Their logs have no value: logs are txt files and unless of property of a third party legal entity they are simply text files and who knows if they have been altered..

- Even if the logs are authentic I'm quite sure I could be able to sniff the authentic sent packets, forge my own with fake data and send to their piracy control system

- Mac addresses were still not shared; like ip addresses they have even less importance, they can be spoofed or, even more, they can be changed for virtual adapters

- Even if they open a case, most probably they will open it in the court where their company resides (US?); the law, in my Country, says that the case must be opened in the Country of the defedant; they state that the user accomplished to their terms and conditions of their contract when the user installed the pirated copy; however, a sentence in the UK stated that the contract inside a pirated copy has no value and cannot be considered valid

- Do they know what is GDPR? if they can track users, and they can (till now, I know they grab ip addresses and they use wifi tracking), they can be reported to the privacy guarantor in Europe, and I think in UK too..

- Just to give you some "numbers": Ansys sent in this year (2023) an average of 3,5 emails with letters attached per day.

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All of this was before reading this forum.

 I will update this post for more information on how the situation will evolve, just to have a complete report of this.

 

Special thanks to dx100uk

[dx100uk]

ignore totally

 

dx

 

[aaa577aaa]

Hello all,

following this thread I opened about one year ago:

I waited a year before posting again about this, because sometimes you can find similar discussions but with no follow up, and when someone receives such email may go into panic and wants to read something comforting.

Well, my last email to that 'kind person' was dated may 2023 and it said that the ip address was not belonging to my company, nor to any person working in my company, and that I didn't know how they could link geographical coordinates to my company.

My last sentence was that they could request to the internet provider releasing that ip address name and surname of the owner, and that they would find that it didn't belong to my company (and btw...this was the truth).

I also added that I had to report him to local authorities if he continued to write to me or to any of my colleague. STOP.

He still replied that geographical coordinates are provided by wifi triangulation.

Pathetic...this email had no reply from me.

From then, no new email from these people.

So advices are still valid, ignore totally.

 

[dx100uk]

i wouldn't of bothered to ever reply myself.

simply invites pointless letter tennis.

dx

 

[aaa577aaa]

I agree, but why not?nothing to hide from my part. Obviously, this is valid for a couple of mails, once I explained my reasons there's no need to further discuss

 

[dx100uk]

gives them a feeling of grandeur.

dx