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goalfacemoderat
Former Member
Message 1 of 10

False Positive: Clean Web Site Blacklisted by Siteadvisor - Support isn't responding, what can I do?

Hi McAfee Community,

My team and I have been trying to reachMcAfee/SiteAdvisor for over 1 month now regarding the blacklisting/flagging of my web site GoalFace.com and have received no response.

It appears that McAfee/SiteAdvisor has based its blacklisting of GoalFace.com on a reviewer's 12/30/2009 report that GoalFace.com was listed on some web site in India that claims to track spamming web sites.  My team and I have checked the site referred to by the reviewer and have been unable to find GoalFace.com listed.  I have brought this to McAfee/SiteAdvisor's attention on several occasion with no response from them.  I even tried to register on SiteAdvisor as the GoalFace.com site owner to respond to the claim against GoalFace.com, but kept getting error messages when I tried to do so.

GoalFace is an honest company, providing football (soccer) fans with access to information about 100,000 professional football teams and players from 200+ leagues and around the world for free via our web site. We have tested the site on Google Safe Browsing, Norton Safe Web and Phish Tank, and all of them stated that GoalFace.com is clean.  The web site is hosted on dedicated infrastructure with a well known and reputable hosting provider.

It is amazing to me that McAfee/SiteAdvisor would place and proliferate warnings about GoalFace based on an individual reviewer's comments, particularly when the individual reviewer's comments are based on hearsay (i.e. GoalFace.com listed on a site in India that claims to track spamming web sites). Worse is the fact that they do so without an honest reply to repeated  inquiry and attempts to resolve the matter.

My team and I have been waiting for a response for more than a month and deserve an answer.  It would be great if McAfee would respond with an explanation and correct the situation by placing an all  clear on our site (i.e. green check mark).  If there is anyone on this board that can help it would be greatly appreciated.  My team and I have put significant effort, money and resources into getting GoalFace up and running. GoalFace is at a critical stage of development, and false information that wrongly flags the site as risky and limits the sites growth could be disasterous at this early stage.

Thank you in advance for reading my post and for any help you can provide.

Best regards,

John Gakau

President

GoalFace.com

9 Replies
x-pmeyer
Former Member
Message 2 of 10

Re: False Positive: Clean Web Site Blacklisted by Siteadvisor - Support isn't responding, what can I do?

Hello John,

I have escalated your request to the appropriate team within McAfee. I will provide an update as soon your web site has been updated.

Thanks, Peter

AlphaCentauri
Former Member
Message 3 of 10

Re: False Positive: Clean Web Site Blacklisted by Siteadvisor - Support isn't responding, what can I do?

It looks like the domain has been registered since 2007, mostly as a proxy registration.

However, it appears on a list of spamvertised websites from 2005. Apparently it was shut down after that (the Indian registrar, Directi, is very strict on spamming). It may have remained unregistered for a while. The domain registration history from 2005-2007 isn't recorded at DomainTools.

There are two domains listed as having shared the same nameserver at that time: goalface.com and sugaraway.com. That pattern of using two random English words to form a domain name is very popular with pharma spammers. The domain was probably in existence for two or three days in 2005 before it was shut down.'

The reviewer comment you mention from 2009 has been removed, but reviewer comments don't affect McAfee's rating. I would hope McAfee isn't judging a domain by a 2005 spam blacklist, or even a 2009 one.

goalfacemoderat
Former Member
Message 4 of 10

Re: False Positive: Clean Web Site Blacklisted by Siteadvisor - Support isn't responding, what can I do?

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your help. Does McAfee have a way for site owners to contact McAfee directly? 

As I said in my original post, when I tried to register as the site owner to respond to the blacklist claim the form kept generating errors.

We look forward to getting this resolved "quickly", as the impact to our business by all this has been quite serious.

Thanks again,

John Gakau

President

GoalFace.com

goalfacemoderat
Former Member
Message 5 of 10

Re: False Positive: Clean Web Site Blacklisted by Siteadvisor - Support isn't responding, what can I do?

Hi AlphaCentauri,

Thanks for the information about the GoalFace.com domain.  Until now I thought we were original as I did not realize the domain had been registered prior to 2007 .  You got that history from DomainTools? Do you find their service to be good/helpful?

Yes, I do see that the review I mentioned in my initial post has been removed.  It is the second one that has been removed since my initial inquiry back in February.  Both reviews were by the same person, who was rated 9 of 9 when this all began.  When the first review was removed the reviewer's rating went down to 8 of 9.  I suspect with this most recent removal it will go down further.  Unfortunately, I think that SiteAdvisor is banking on old/unvetted information and could benefit from a more robust model for the blacklisting of web sites.

Thanks again,

John Gakau

President

GoalFace.com

AlphaCentauri
Former Member
Message 6 of 10

Re: False Positive: Clean Web Site Blacklisted by Siteadvisor - Support isn't responding, what can I do?

Domaintools can be very useful, though in this instance it wasn't.

But what I was getting at is that as a level 9 reviewer, I can assure you that McAfee totally ignores anything we post. There has to be another cause. And the person who posted the negative review may have been relying on a source that McAfee is still relying on.  McAfee's ratings are automated, so if you don't find the outside source of negative information, you may find any inaccurate rating that gets fixed won't stay fixed.  Since I don't know who the original reviewer was or what the review said, it's hard to track it down. There are a bazillion good links to your site on the internet, so I need additional keywords to narrow the search.

exbrit
MVP
MVP
Message 7 of 10

Re: False Positive: Clean Web Site Blacklisted by Siteadvisor - Support isn't responding, what can I do?

WOT's verdict may also help:  http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/goalface.com

It seems spam is the problem, there at least.


Message was edited by: Ex_Brit on 29/03/11 11:04:42 EDT AM
x-pmeyer
Former Member
Message 8 of 10

Re: False Positive: Clean Web Site Blacklisted by Siteadvisor - Support isn't responding, what can I do?

Hi John,

I've been told that your web site gets updated to green in Site Advisor within the next 24hrs.

The thread https://community.mcafee.com/message/66185 explains how to contact McAfee in regards of Site Advisor.

Best regards,

Peter

AlphaCentauri
Former Member
Message 9 of 10

Re: False Positive: Clean Web Site Blacklisted by Siteadvisor - Support isn't responding, what can I do?

Ex_Brit wrote:

WOT's verdict may also help:  http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/goalface.com

It seems spam is the problem, there at least.

It looks like it showed up on Joe Wein's list multiple times. That would indicate  you have a spamtrap address on your email list.  Do you have an affiliate program? Do you use double-opt-in before adding an email address to a newsletter mailing list?

x-pmeyer
Former Member
Message 10 of 10

Re: False Positive: Clean Web Site Blacklisted by Siteadvisor - Support isn't responding, what can I do?

Hi John,

your web site has turned to green: http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/goalface.com

Best regards,

Peter

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