Hi everyone,
I recently created a thread pointing folks in Adlandpro to a website that was advertised and presented as a site that gives reliable information on the trustworthiness of a website, along with a recommendation to download their
software and use the site.
While it was a most excellent learning opportunity for me, what I learned was that it was NOT a reliable website, and that I should not have recommended it.
The website I am referring to is MyWot. It turned out rather quickly that the site does not use any kind of scientific method to determine a site's trustworthiness, but instead, relies on the
opinions and bias of visitors to their site.
In doing personal, careful and scientific research (gathering empirical evidence), myself, I discovered that, contrary to their claims, their site CAN, INDEED, be manipulated with relative ease.
There are MANY sites on the internet that are purported to be "scam busting" or internet safety sites, yet when examined, prove to be nothing more than opinion sites, often with as little sophistication as simple forums, and sometimes with a more respectable appearance, such as MyWOT and others like them.
Forums are NOTORIOUSLY unreliable sources of information. You can waste many hours on forums trying to do due diligence, only to come out on the other side even more confused than when you went in. You need FACTS, not opinions.
Forums can be a useful first stop only to gather information for further searching. You can gather links from such sites that still need to be chased down, and you can also ask members for links that offer solid proof about the reliability or lack thereof of a website or
business.
MyWOT and some of their competitors are even less reliable than many forums I have visited. What appears at first glance to be a reliable site, falls apart when you visit inside.
I discovered, for instance, that members with very high rankings, called "Platinum" members, were getting there by visiting blacklist sites, themselves hideously unreliable, copying the URLs from their lists, one at a time, ranking them according to what the blacklist was about, then posting a cut-and-past negative post in their comments section for every one of them, which very quickly made them "super posters."
To their
credit, when I contacted MyWOT about several of these members, their comments were removed from inside the site, but they continue to stay on the public side. I took the liberty of taking screen shots inside their site, in case there was ever any doubt.
What this has shown, though, is that this site and others like it are relying solely on OPINION to rank a site, which it terribly wrong. That is basically sending out a lynch mob to do a jury's duty. Has anyone here ever read, "The Oxbow Incident?" If not, you should.
There are excellent sites available that are very scientific in their approach, such as the ones listed at the bottom of every Adlandpro page. These are very reliable sites, though there are some conspiracy theorists who would tell you that ALL sites (except theirs) are scam sites, and that even the BBB, all police forces at every level and all government officials are scammers. There is a word for such sad folks: delusional. Theirs is a form of narcissism that has not been fully realized and will never let them admit they are wrong.
You, on the other hand, can rely on such sites as Norton, McAfee, Truste, Scamadviser and K-9 Web Protection as being very reliable sites to protect you from scammers and other illegal activity.
Remember, no one site is perfect, so part of due diligence is checking more than one site. If, when you are checking on such reliable sites as these, you find a disagreement between two of them, chase down those leads to see which one stands up, and be a help to the whole community by messaging the site that was incorrect with your findings.
At this point in time, I would advise everyone to uninstall the MyWOT software from your computer if you haven't already, and for a very good piece of software to have on your computer, I recommend
(This is not an affiliate link). With this software, once you have it set up, it will warn you whenever you come to a website that is questionable, illegal, adult in nature, a possible ponzi, gambling, etc., or is known to contain malware. Should you wish to proceed, it will require you to enter a password (you have been warned). You have a certain amount of liberty regarding the level of protection you want. This is EXCELLENT software, and many pastors have it on their computers, both at the office, and at home.
I have this on my computer and am sometimes amazed when it suddenly blocks a site with a warning about the site's integrity or legality. This is NOT opinion based, but relies on facts, as well as a database of known terms often used on questionable or illegal sites.
Using such a site and doing careful due diligence EVER SINGLE time you look at something new will be a very big help for yourself in keeping you safe from malware and crooks, and will help to make Adlandpro.com a place where others will come looking for place to do business in a strong, reliable and safe community.
God bless,
Dave