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The Scary Anatomy of a Microsoft License Fraud

This post was most recently updated on August 31st, 2022.

9 min read.

Note: While this was originally posted around the Christmas of 2018, and some company or seller names might not be relevant as scammers come and go, the principles in this blog post seem to be valid from the early 2000s to probably until 2038 (when the Internet ends due to the Epochalypse).


For those of you, who don’t want to read any extra fluff, let me just offer you this extra-short version of my article in FAQ form:

Is Office 365 lifetime subscription a scam?

Yes.

Now, if you want the long answer with all the scary stuff, read on.


Tis the season for gifts, and lots of y’all might be thinking about giving out a digital gift. Maybe some of the more practical ones think about gifting someone a subscription to Office 365 – and why not, it’s a pretty useful present, right?

However, you might want to think about where you got that subscription from. Don’t get the bootleg option – you might end up regretting it!

I’ve stumbled upon a few online retailers, that sell Microsoft Office 365 (Microsoft’s subscription-based Office offering) on a one-time fee basis. Their value proposition is that you only pay them a small fee once, and you get a subscription-based service from Microsoft forever. Compared with continuous payments, a lot of people prefer perpetual license modes, but like the pros of a cloud offering like Office 365.

Does this sound too good to be true? Well, probably because it is. Generally, that’s the rule after all!

Let’s take a closer look, and review one of these companies – this one is called DigitalUpgradeStudios, and their store was located at www.digitalupgradestudios.com. I find they’re offering a great example of a combined invasion of privacy and license fraud – a beautiful scam, all-in-all.

I generally don’t care about people wasting their money, but this case actually has some shady and pretty scary implications, so I thought I’d dig in a bit.

So – below I’m telling you, why DigitalUpgradeStudio is a scam. A typical example of a modern-day, online Microsoft licensing scam. Offering Office 365 as a lifetime service simply doesn’t make sense financially for ANYONE. Not even Microsoft, let alone anyone else!

Practically everything said on this page applies to eBay sellers advertising their products with the following phrases:

  • Office 365 Pro Plus Lifetime Account Subscription
  • Microsoft Office 365 Personal Lifetime Subscription for 5 PCs
  • Microsoft Office 365 Pro Plus Home & Business For 5 Users 2019 lifetime service
  • Microsoft Office 365 Pro Plus Home & Business For 5 Users

Practically all of these are scammers and you should stay away from them! Just, some of them are even scammier than the others – in some cases, you’re not really getting anything for your money, sometimes you’re buying stolen goods, and sometimes you’re giving your data to crooks.

Update 14.2.2019: When I wrote this post in December, I foresaw the company just stealing people’s money and data, and then disappearing from the internet. The scam lasted for an even shorter time than I expected since they’re off the grid already. Still – my reasoning is available below, and I’ll just add any references to other shady companies to this blog post in the future.

Update 21.3.2019: The original fraudster I posted about – DigitalUpgradeStudios – has reappeared with a new domain, adding an “s” in the old one (which was decommissioned – likely due to an abuse complaint). They now operate at digitalupgradesstudio.com (instead of digitalupgradestudios.com) and continue the same stuff they’ve been pulling before.

Compare the following domain records:
http://whois.domaintools.com/digitalupgradestudios.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/digitalupgradesstudio.com

Whois record and domain status for  digitalupgradestudios.com
Whois record and domain status for digitalupgradestudios.com

Are lifetime subscriptions to Office 365 always scams?

For the most part, yes. They do bait you in with a reasonable offer, though.

(Don’t want to read the whole thing? Jump to the bottom line!)

That means, that they give you what they promise – Microsoft Office 365 for a lifetime for a price that’s cheaper than anywhere else. It’s just a shame, that they’re not talking about the lifetime of the user, or the service – but about their company or online store. Which is most likely going to only be about 6 more months or so.

Why would you berate an honest businessman like this? Aren’t they allowed to make some money and offer competing services?

Devil’s advocate

Sure they are! I just wished they didn’t commit license infringement, probably intellectual property theft, privacy invasion, and finally fraud in the process.

In short, license brokers like DigitalUpgradeStudio are mostly frauds. Why? Let me explain!

The company hasn’t been around for a long time, and they admit this themselves. They even play the “you just haven’t heard from us because we are new and awesome”-card.

A challenger appears! Can the underdog beat a behemot like Microsoft? Everyone is surely on the underdog's side, especially if they help us save money!
A challenger appears! Can the underdog beat a behemoth like Microsoft? Everyone is surely on the underdog’s side, especially if they help us save money!

Taking a look into the whois records of their webshop, which has only existed since September, although they launched their Facebook page already in August.

Whois record for digitalupgradestudios.com (you can check it out yourself at http://whois.domaintools.com/digitalupgradestudios.com)
Whois record for digitalupgradestudios.com (you can check it out yourself at http://whois.domaintools.com/digitalupgradestudios.com)

And archive.org doesn’t find the site until October! https://web.archive.org/web/20181027014332/https://digitalupgradestudios.com/

For eBay sellers, these are mostly very new accounts. They quickly get a bunch of positive feedback (because they actually DO deliver an invitation to an organization with the Office 365 subscription very fast), and only when things turn sour do the ratings go down – but at this point, the scam’s already done, they’ve got the money and will just churn out a new account.

Do note, however, that the account might’ve been created years ago, but only activated for scamming recently.

A typical Office 365 lifetime subscription scammer has a fairly fresh account on eBay.
A typical Office 365 lifetime subscription scammer has a fairly fresh account on eBay.

Okay – so they’re new. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t legit! They’re just reselling licenses, what’s wrong with that?

Devil’s advocate

What these retailers are doing, is (for the most part) not actually selling licenses, and especially not selling licenses for a lifetime. Instead, they’re customers of Microsoft themselves – and for a fee, they’re admitting you as a user into their organization, and purchasing you a license from Microsoft. This happens, naturally, only after you pay the said one-time fee, and your “licenses” are solely based on the existence of their existing customer relationship with Microsoft. Additionally, the definition of said “lifetime” is solely at their discretion.

The lifetime, hence, does not mean your lifetime or the lifetime or “Microsoft Office suite”, or anything like that. It’s the lifetime of the broker’s business relationship with Microsoft.

Some of the reviewers actually note this – and the seller doesn’t really even dispute the risk, but agrees that there are “restrictions”, because “otherwise how would you get such a good deal”.

Right…

It’s not the only complaint, though – there’s more.

A review of DigitalUpgradeStudio. Available here: https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpermalink.php%3Fstory_fbid%3D479151095914388%26id%3D100014585041812&width=500
A review of DigitalUpgradeStudio. Available here.

This has some scary implications, but let’s not jump into them quite yet.

Already at this point, it’s safe to establish that Microsoft Office 365 lifetime licenses are usually scams. You can get the desktop apps for a lifetime for a fee, of course – but that doesn’t include a lifetime 1 TB OneDrive space, for example.

Does the business model make any sense?

Since these companies offer a subscription-based product on a one-time-fee, that means that each customer is at their most profitable right after paying the one-time fee. After this, their value dwindles quickly – and starts making a loss after about 6 months.

This means, that they’ll need to either get more and more customers to pay for the new and existing licenses or get some other value out of the users. It’s almost like a Ponzi or a pyramid scheme, where new money is constantly needed to provide services for the people who joined before you!

In the graph below, I approximate how their business model will work. For each month of operation (X-axis), I’m approximating the revenue (new users * price of the product), the cost to maintain the licenses (total count of users * price of license per month), and calculate the profit (revenue – cost to maintain the licenses).

I’m approximating the spreading knowledge of the product and raising brand awareness to cause an increase in new monthly customers – e.g., each month, the company gets a bit more new customers than last it did the last month. This causes the revenue to grow pretty quickly.

The costs associated with the licenses follow a different kind of curve. They need to be paid for each user – whether they are old or new – each month. This means that the expenses associated with the licenses (the company only gets paid once) will run as long as the license is active – e.g., forever.

The graph shows the dwindling profitability of selling subscription-based products with one-time fee.
The graph shows the dwindling profitability of selling subscription-based products with a one-time fee.

This is not a problem for the company, however. When the balance sheet shows red, they just pull the plug, take the money, and shut down the service.See, you’re not buying anything from Microsoft in this case. You’re renting a lifetime subscription from DigitalUpgradeStudio’s Office 365 subscription – and that lifetime only lasts as long as DigitalUpgradeStudio pays Microsoft for the licenses – e.g., 11 months according to this estimation.

Table of profitability estimates, when your whole business model is about brokering subscription-based services for a one-time fee. It's not profitable for very long.
Table of profitability estimates, when your whole business model is about brokering subscription-based services for a one-time fee. It’s not profitable for very long.

What’s going to happen after that? Well for one, you won’t have your Microsoft Office or OneDrive anymore, since Microsoft is not getting paid for them anymore.

What other value do the companies get from their customers?

Okay – so it’s hardly viable financially. But if they’ve found other revenue streams, they can surely keep this going for a long enough time for the customers to get a good value for their “lifetime” subscriptions, right?

Devil’s advocate

Ah – now comes the juicy part!

You’re essentially paying a company to be allowed to send all of your data to them. They have free reign over it. You don’t know them. They are probably Russian, or possibly Moldavian. And now they have your files.

Even if you remove your files, they still stay in their recycle bin, and they can restore them. And they probably will.

Effectively, they’ll get your money, they’ll get your files, and once the profit dwindles enough, they’ll shut down the service. Afterward, they have plenty of time to lay on the beach sipping margaritas and shuffling through your files to see something they can steal, or possibly blackmail you with. 

I just hope nobody associated their phone’s Camera Roll with the subscription they got from these guys…

This is libel and you should be sued. Delete this article right now!

Devil’s advocate

Hey, I could be wrong. I’d love to be wrong because I’d hate for someone’s nude selfies (that they upload to OneDrive) to end up used in a blackmail campaign. In the best possible case, maybe the brokers are NOT accessing their customers’ data (even though they certainly can), and maybe they can achieve such explosive and sustainable growth, that they can keep the lights on for years. In that case, users would get discounted licenses for a few years, Microsoft would get their license money, and the broker will probably get a good living out of that.

But I’m not very hopeful.

So it’s almost legit! Just don’t upload anything sensitive or valuable. But is it worth it?

Okay – you’re not worried about giving away your data to be hosted by some random internet people, you’re not worried about license infringements, and don’t care about possibly losing your data. The only thing you’re after, is value – and you want to know, is this a value deal? Let’s calculate!

After all, it’s a lifetime subscription, and lifetime subscriptions for a small fee are awesome! How long do you have for your “lifetime subscription” if you buy now?

Let’s see… If the business is viable for 11 months, and they started in September – you should be good until next July-August. So if you buy RIGHT NOW, you still have almost 8 months with that $75. That’s about $9 per month.

Or, alternatively, you could just buy a full year for $99 from Microsoft, and not let some internet weirdos steal all of your data. Also, that’s just $8 per month.

Lastly, while DigitalUpgradesStudios is a good example of such a license broker, they’re certainly not the only one. You’ll find these same scams also on eBay and other marketplaces. The sellers tend to disappear after a while, though. I wonder why…

If you happen to get Microsoft Office desktop licenses from somewhere – say, eBay – for a super cheap price, it’s a bit of a different story. As long as it’s not Office 365, doesn’t include OneDrive (or includes a temporary diamond -subscription, since those might be included in a legit license), and you’re not generating a new email account to log into anything, your data is probably safe.

However, it’s likely still a license fraud (and against Microsoft’s licensing rules), but at least you’re not giving away your data.

TLDR -version

Long story short: It’s a scam – you’ll get Office 365 for a few months only, and you’re sending your precious data to crooks. They’ll harvest your data, steal your passwords and cat pictures, and you’re paying them to do that.

Bottom line: Don’t do it.

mm
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