Warning: This is a spoof, spam, or malware site

3 thoughts on “Warning: This is a spoof, spam, or malware site”

1. Thanks for evaluating the Compete toolbar. In regards to your criticism of the Trust Score, our objective is to help people avoid malicious sites. Between third party security services, Castle Cops network black list and Compete site visitation history we can accurately flag spoof, spam, spyware, etc. sites.

   I agree that your site is not dangerous, but it is also a stretch for us to consider you “trusted”. None of our 2M members has ever visited your site and Geotrust has not verified the site as safe.

   With that said, in order for Compete to provide more robust scores for long tail sites we need to incorporate new levels social input beyond click history. In the future people will be able to submit rankings and reviews of sites, which will afford sites such as yours to influence and improve our trust scores.

2. I can understand that my site is not considered “trusted” by an algorithm-based trust system, but I have to take issue with your claim that “we can accurately flag spoof, spam, spyware, etc. sites.” Then why is my site being flagged as such? Or is this a case of simply never giving false negatives?

   That’s like a pregnancy test which claims to accurately to detect a pregnancy 100% of the time, but it simply always says “you’re pregnant”! Just nevermind the false positives which occur 99.9% of the time…

   Your system clearly claims “Compete and/or Geotrust security services have deemed [wanderingstan.com] as a spoof, spam, or malware site.”

   I stand by my original reaction: WTF!!?

3. WTF?

   Not sure if those are the best words to conduct the conversation, but so be it… Several months ago some small sites operators contacted us and challenged our initial scoring system. We evaluated their feedback and determined our scoring system was being misinterpreted and that ‘not trusted’ was being read as dangerous – which is not an accurate intrepation. As of last week we began alterating both our scoring system and language to score sites which lacked sufficient data points as “neutral”.

   The goal is to better communicate that a site may be very safe – such as you own (minus the abrevaited f bombs) – but that we simply can’t confirm its saftefy due to a lack of information. You should see the breadth of these updates by September 1st.

   Thanks for challengng us on this issue. It’s a strong point that had engaged a handful of site operators prior to your inquiry. However, it’s always benefitial to have an open forum to communicate how the communinty is altering policy and process.

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