The Fingerprints that Tie Eyeglassesdepot to Notorious Retailer Opticsfast

I was quoted in The New York Times' "Has Online Retail’s Biggest Bully Returned?" for my research tying Eyeglassesdepot, a new site with increasingly bad reviews, to Opticsfast, an old site run by a twice convicted felon.

Besides what was mentioned in the article, there's other fingerprints I found that suggest the same owners are behind both sites. 

1) Same Bing Webmaster Tools tag ID

• eyeglassesdepot.com: 2A784DDF51468A66B5985261D080B5BD
• opticsfast.com: 2A784DDF51468A66B5985261D080B5BD

2) Same ProvideSupport chat button code

• eyeglassesdepot.com: image.providesupport.com/js/opticsfast/safe-standard.js
• opticsfast.com: image.providesupport.com/js/opticsfast/safe-standard.js

ProvideSupport's installation documentation says the part of that URL after /js/ is your account name, so both sites are using opticsfast as the account name, i.e. the same account.

3) Same SiteLock code

• eyeglassesdepot.com: www.sitelock.com/verify.php?site=www.opticsfast.com
• opticsfast.com: www.sitelock.com/verify.php?site=www.opticsfast.com

4) Same Tidio chat widget code

• eyeglassesdepot.com: code.tidio.co/xkzwaa0hhuo6pz5y7lg3r4pasy2u4esa.js
• opticsfast.com: code.tidio.co/xkzwaa0hhuo6pz5y7lg3r4pasy2u4esa.js

According to https://docs.tidiochat.com/#in... the long ID there is the account's public key. They wouldn't give two sites the same public key, therefore it's the same person behind them.

5) Instances of "OpticsFast.com" remain in the title tags and meta descriptions of eyeglassesdepot.com

It's obvious whoever built eyeglassesdepot.com just duplicated opticsfast.com's site code and made changes but didn't change all instances of the code.

6) In fact, 95% of the code on the two sites is the same

It's obvious so much of the code on eyeglassesdepot.com and opticsfast.com are exactly the same because eyeglassesdepot.com was cloned from opticsfast.com and the developer just never bothered to update all the tags and meta data on eyeglassesdepot.com, keeping as-is whatever opticsfast.com had. I ran the home page's source code of both sites through https://countwordsfree.com/com... and the similarity of the two is 95%.

Even if the sites are clones, does that mean the same person is behind both?

One could argue that just because eyeglassesdepot.com was cloned from opticsfast.com it doesn't mean they necessarily share the same owners. The way the web works is that any website's source code is easily viewable (and stealable), but you also have to realize:

1. who copies such an old and nefarious website to build their site (most likely the person behind opticsfast.com to save money on not developing a new site - just changing 5% of the code instead)
   
   
2. opticsfast.com links to a page on eyeglassesdepot.com in the top navigation of every page on their site. If someone steals your website code and builds a new site out of it, who the hell links to them as well. 

Regarding that last point, there is an instance of eyeglassesdepot.com in opticsfast.com's code too:

<a href="<a href="http://www.eyeglassesdepot.com/feedback.asp?idx=1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.eyeglassesdepot.com/feedback.asp?idx=1</a>" target="kampyleWindow" id="kampylink" class="k_float k_top k_left" onclick="javascript:k_button.open_ff();return false;"><img src="<a href="https://www.opticsfast.com/feedback/en-yellow-corner-up-left.gif" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">/feedback/en-yellow-corner-up-left.gif</a>" alt="Feedback Form"/></a>

It's this "Give Feedback" thing in the top left corner:

Everything I mentioned thus far are instances of opticsfast.com found on eyeglassesdepot.com, but this is an instance of eyeglassesdepot.com in opticsfast.com's code too. 

With this preponderance of evidence, it's most likely the same owner behind both sites.

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