Posted by Virus Bulletin on Sep 27, 2006
Certificates sign of danger, says researcher.
Website certification system Truste has been hit by a report claiming that sites bearing its certificates are more than twice as likely to be unsafe than uncertified ones.
The study compares a list of sites issued with the TRUSTe certificate with data from McAfee's Site Advisor service, which alerts users to sites known to be carrying malicious content or responsible for spamming. The analysis of over 500,000 sites found that large numbers of adware providers were using the certification service to calm users' fears, as well as address-gathering operations used by spammers.
TRUSTe has claimed that the findings were based on false methodology, and that many of the worst offenders are no longer on its roster of trusted sites; its blog entry on the matter is here. The researcher, Ben Edelman, released his detailed study on his own website, with some commentary here.
Posted on 27 September 2006 by Virus Bulletin
