Update June 14, 2011 Apparently McAfee wasn’t getting enough fake website reviews. Now they are negatively rating websites without getting any reviews. And now they are also redirecting all the falsely labeled website traffic to themselves. This is an example of a redirection.
This is a sampling of some of my websites that McAfee is stealing traffic from by simply falsely labeling them a security risk:
- admirer.com
- aficionados.com
- armoured.com
- babied.com
- ballasts.com
- banker.us
- berths.com
- bioelectronics.com
- blobs.com
- boardwalks.com
- bonds.us
- bumps.com
- dies.com
- digitization.com
- duplications.com
- electrodes.com
- fastcreditcards.com
- getaccess.com
- graduated.com
- hoists.com
- insignias.com
- ipo.us
- lineups.com
- numbered.com
- pedestrians.com
- poe.com
- refilled.com
- restraints.com
- secluded.com
- stinkers.com
- swordplay.com
- tradeoff.com
- vats.com
Thousands of website owners are being victimized by McAfee SiteAdvisor’s negative web safety ratings. SiteAdvisor base these ratings on reviewer feedback. This has to be the case since one of my websites SpywareInfo.com was given a red rating and it has never posed a security risk.
The bulk of SiteAdvisor reviewers are bots making mass reviews. 1,817,004 reviews by “pararmalert” makes that blatantly obvious.
SiteAdvisor benefits from these mass bot reviews in two ways. When you see hundreds of sites labeled a security risk you assume their free service is protecting you. The second way and most lucrative for McAfee is the selling of their McAfee Secure service. Sign up for this service if you want to eliminate your erroneous negative SiteAdvisor rating. I actually thought I was signing up for this service when I saw http://www.cyberlab.com had this image and followed the link to https://www.mcafeesecure.com/RatingVerify?ref=cyberlab.com and saw this :
So I signed up and paid $319. Turns out I signed up for a lesser McAfee PCI Certification Service not the McAfee Secure Service. I called and they told me they could credit what I paid towards their McAfee Secure Service. I was told the McAfee Secure price was a lot higher. I canceled the McAfee PCI Certification Service.
My first step at trying to get SiteAdvisor to correct their erroneous rating of SpywareInfo.com was to submit this form December 19th http://www.siteadvisor.com/userfeedback.html They responded with “SiteAdvisor engineers will look into your issue, and will issue a change if it is deemed appropriate.” The only result from this was they removed 20 positive reviews from SpywareInfo.com. My rating remains the same.
Yesterday I had enough and responded to SiteAdvisor support with this:
I understand your scam now http://www.mcafeesecure.com/us/. You encourage bot reviews from bot users that make 1/2 a million + negative reviews so that falsely accused website owners have to pay your extortion fees for your McAfee Secure service. It also helps you to look like your crappy SiteAdvisor service is actually doing something.
The only thing resulting from my email to you is 20 positive reviews about my website were removed. Do not destroy any records regarding spywareinfo.com including what day you labeled my site a security risk. This data will be vital in determining damages and will be the first thing asked for in discovery. Also don’t lose any data showing websites labeled a red security risk suddenly becoming green after they paid your extortion fee. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that McAfee is really the culprit behind your multiple mass reviewer users.
I’ll see you in court and I’m shooting for class designation. I’m finding plenty of others on the Internet slandered, defamed and victimized by this scam. Your gravy train scam needs to be exposed.
Quick web search results:
http://bitsum.blogspot.com/
http://siteadvisorclassaction.blogspot.com/2008/06/mcafee-site-advisor-run-amuck.html
http://www.snapfiles.com/siteadvisor.html
http://muquit.com/
I started this website yesterday, 1/12/2011, and already it’s showing up on the first page of Google for “SiteAdvisor Class Action”.
Update 01/19/2011 SiteAdvisor took away 5 more positive reviews and switched it to green. The fact still remains that they cost me a lot of money and credibility with their previous false rating.