Explain this - domain rated RED, despite ALL GREEN downloads, ALL GREEN reviews, ALL GREEN links

[jcollake]

Oh, you don't like bad things said about you? NEITHER DO I!!! And my family depends on my reputation. Further, all 'bad things' said about me have been completely FALSE.. in EVERY WAY. Ever since I turned down that certification. This has grown larger now, agencies are involved. I run one of the most legit sites on the internet, and I say that without hesitation. Your attack on me further demonstrates that, apparently, SiteAdvisor is rife with fraud. The fact you allow bots to operate on your network says that.. Hello?!? Nobody notice this pharmalert bot making 1.9 MILLION specious accusations and counting (some of them maybe right, but the one against me sure wasn't).

A bot is really an ALGORITHM that you are PERMITTING to operate on your network, so don't give me this 'not responsible for reviewer comments' crap. Yes, they refused to remove that specious accusation from my site, while removing 16 of 17 GREEN ratings without explanation.

I know, you love SiteAdvisor.. but the fact is we've got corporate greed involved. You need to think about this.

I did NOT, at any time, mention your specific name in my update.. because, unlike some corporations, I'm a nice guy.

Message was edited by: jcollake on 1/24/11 4:11:36 PM GMT-05:00

[Hayton]

Please be patient. I'm working through all the possible reasons for a red rating and crossing them off the list. So far I see no reason for it, that file shows up but is not relevant. All I can do is tell you bit by bit whether your site is or is not a safe one, and so far I see no reason for it being red. But this can't be rushed, I need to investigate every possibility and rule things out one by one.

[jcollake]

I apologize. Too bad this forum doesn't have a DELETE button. I guess I could wipe out my rants, but I woke up .. hoping this would all go away, and .. well I'm just so down now. Now I have to do all this paperwork and file proper complaints, not to mention other things going on against McAfee. It is just a lot of work I hoped to avoid by simply having a gross error fixed.

I will remove my comment about you, though I didn't mention your name. If only SiteAdvisor responded so quickly.

Continue investigating.. investigate, investigate, investigate... just don't jump to any conclusions without giving me a chance to explain, if you by some chance find something you have a question about.

On the flip side, I am TRYING not to jump to conclusions about rogue elements in McAfee Secure, but so far NO EVIDENCE has been given as to why this rating was made (processlasso.com), or why pharmalert posted a specious accusation against bitusm.com within 36 hours after me turning down their most recent offer, or why 16 of 17 positive reviews of bitsum.com were removed. I simply got blocked from further contact. All emails from bitsum.com to mcafee.com now bounce. So, I WANT another explanation.. but none is provided, leading me to believe I must be right ;o. It seems general agreement has been reached by the FTC on this matter already. Apparently they'd had complaints before. They may be treating this one like the 'golden goose', as I am too legit to quit, lol.

Message was edited by: jcollake on 1/24/11 6:04:50 PM GMT-05:00

[jcollake]

As of minutes ago, PROCESSLASSO.COM is now properly rated GREEN. The trouble I've had to go through to get this rating leaves me in a state where I don't want to see other businesses victimized or potentially extorted. I make no accusation of extortion, but the timing makes the odds 1/10000? (a guess).

If this thread helped (I don't know what finally did), thank you. Now I can actually return to work and feed my family with my completely legitimate software operating with the utmost ethical guidelines (far above any other company I can think of).

Message was edited by: jcollake on 1/24/11 6:20:11 PM GMT-05:00

[jcollake]

However, unlike other victimized businesses, I want to get to the bottom of this... I am not counting my blessings and hoping not to be victimized again. So, there is no answer to why this EVER occurred.. and my theory, as crazy as it sounds, grows more and more plausible. I invite McAfee representatives to contact me immediately if they wish to not have an FTC complaint lodged against them for this incident (note: this is the second time I was victimized, so not letting it go so fast this time).

Small business owners all over America are being victimized, some not even knowing it (though mistakes).. others not knowing it after receiving a McAfee Secure call. Most don't check their own ratings it seems. 350+ million users do though ;o. They probably wondered why their sales went down. Anyway, things MUST change. EVERYONE in the security community, and EVEN your supporters would agree.

Message was edited by: jcollake on 1/24/11 6:26:57 PM GMT-05:00

[AlphaCentauri]

Jeremy,

I totally understand how frustrating this all is for you. At least be assured that pharmalert and the other SA volunteer reviewers do not work for McAfee and are as interested in accuracy as you are. I have posted a link to this thread on a forum where pharmalert visits frequently, so he can try to reconstruct the source he relied on for information about your site. I suspect that McAfee may have used the same source as part of their "reputation analysis."

In the meantime, you might want to look at this link I found:

http://support.clean-mx.de/clean-mx/viruses?id=704081

The disappearance of hundreds of thousands of old reviews was part of a site cleanup McAfee did recently. It was nothing directed against your site in particular. The site was becoming unusably slow, and anyway, many of the old reviews referred to sites that had been (justifiably) shut down or had even been re-registered by new people. There was no effort made in the culling process to distinguish between valid reviews for long-lived sites and stale reviews for dead ones. (Now THAT would have slowed the site down for a while!)

[jcollake]

Thank you for the link and info.

That may, or may not, explain the sudden disappearance of all those green ratings, as they restored a Green 9/9 rating the next day. I don't know. They were old ratings, even the 9/9 rating. It was an apology for the first incident, a false positive on my free MakeService utility (no longer distributed due to that.. another freeware utility killed by a false positive).

Although pharmalert NEVER posted on PROCESLASSO.COM, so the IMPROPER RED rating reason there is still UNKNOWN .

That bot (or him) posted on BITSUM.COM, which was thankfully whitelisted from the previous false positive years ago, else he'd have sent my primary domain RED immediately. When I requested the removal of that specious comment, it was denied. I don't feel bots, which are really algorithms, have freedom of speech rights. They make mistakes, as their owners will tell you, so I think it is only right that extremely defamatory comment be removed from BITSUM.COM. IMHO.

There was a false positive by one scanner on a helper utility of Process Lasso, test_gdiplus_present.exe - maybe it false alarmed on it? The false alarm was fixed BY THE SECURITY SOFTWARE in LESS THAN 24 hours (see how quick normal security sites respond).

So, could it have been a coincidence? Maybe... The odds are slim, but maybe.. strange things do happen. From my perspective, it was all a little too fishy and the odds ... Well, you seem to understand my frustration. Until I am confident this type of behavior was not a coincidence... well, I wish someone had an EXPLANATION for PROCESSLASSO.COM's RED rating (now fixed, to YOUR credit).

To Hayton: Let me personally apologize for taking out some of that frustration on you, as you only tried to help me.

Message was edited by: jcollake on 1/24/11 7:18:44 PM GMT-05:00

[jcollake]

I look forward to saying this case is 'closed', but can not do so until the CAUSE of the improper rating is known. The mistaken bot rating spoke about was for my primary domain, bitsum.com. For ProcessLasso.com, the only rating was a 9/9 GREEN rating from a real human, all green downloads, and all green links. So, I would like to know that cause. I have obligations to the larger community now, to get McAfee SiteAdvisor 'on track' to being the reputable company that it can be. After all, at some point even the average Joe wouldn't trust your rating ;o.

Anyway, now I can get back to work at least...

[pharmalert]

I was notified of this thread, and read it through. I see that I have been cast in the mold of an employee of McAfee, or alternatively a robot. Neither is correct.

I simply volunteer my time with no recompense to provided reviews of web sites. Since there are millions of sites out there, it is not possible to post millions of reviews based on personal analysis of every site out there. So I rely on the research performed by others to assess what to post as a review.

The posting on bitsum.com was triggered by the appearance of that domain in a URL that was posted on a malware domain listing. I have no record of which one it was.

I do not have the ability to delete a review - that is not a function that McAfee Site Advisor provides to its reviewers. However, I do have the ability to post a correction, which I have now done.I apologize for the effect that the review may have had. However, I also know from experience that the review was not the cause of the red rating - that is a seperate issue.

In the interests of accuracy, I note that the top right section of http://www.processlasso.com/ has a statement that is now out of date, since the site is now green.

[jcollake]

I have now (or am doing) the correction at ProcessLasso.com, not mentioning the RED rating. It only changed minutes ago.

I believe you, you sound sincere, and I thank you for your rebuttal. However, at nearly 2 miliion posts, there is automation involved, and mistakes happen. If you personally typed those 2 million posts you are one heck of a typer, lol . I assume you just run sites through your own scans, then have an automated means of posting the results. In those results, I encourage you to be specific -- as vague accusations are very hard to 'deal with', if you know what I mean.

Thank you