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  1. User picture
    • Ernst G Westlund on Tue 06 Oct 2009
    • 05:31:09 PM UTC

    Bad rating based on one single incident

    I'm the webmaster of some WordPress powered sites. A copuple of years ago, one of those sites was hacked and used as a host for phishing pages. This was discovered within 24 hours. The site was temporarlily shut down until the problem was solved.

    We learned that the then used version of WordPress had some severe security issues, and of course we upgraded to a later WordPress version. The reason that was not done earlier was that the site had an important plugin, not compatible with later versions. If you know WordPress, you probably have heard of this kind of problem before.

    This one case of hacking apparently resulted in that the site appeared on a list of sites known for phishing. No report of this was sent to the site owner, and thus there was litle chance to have this error corrected. For me, the webmaster, it took two years to learn to know about it, and only because I started to use WOT.

    It is good to work on the safe use of Internet, but you must include security for legitimate information against abuse from sites like WOT. Otherwise, there is no real security. And it should not be mandatory for site owners or webmasters to subscribe to the WOT service in order to get information about such abuse.

Comments:

  2. User picture
    • Sami on Tue 06 Oct 2009
    • 05:55:37 PM UTC

    Re: Bad rating based on one single incident

    The information we show you doesn't originate from WOT. We collect this information from our users and other sources and use it to compute reputations for websites. In your case, the information probably came from PhishTank. Even if there was a way for us to determine the owner of each and every website, we can hardly start sending unsolicited email to random people about their site's reputation. Anyway, if your site was blacklisted and that's the only piece of information we have about it, the reputation won't improve until we receive further ratings for the site.
  3. User picture
    • g7w on Wed 07 Oct 2009
    • 12:41:52 AM UTC

    re: Bad rating based on one single incident

    I'm the webmaster of some WordPress powered sites.

    As Sami mentioned, you could be listed via Phishtank.
    You could also be blacklisted with several other sources

    You mentioned WordPress powered sites (plural)
    Care to list them?

    -------
    WOT Services Ltd. - gives us safety through Web of Trust.
    WOT Community - gives us security through unity.
    Thank you all
    - G7W
  4. User picture
    • phantazm on Thu 08 Oct 2009
    • 12:30:38 AM UTC

    Phishtank, indeed

    Ernst G Westlund: "one of those sites was hacked and used as a host for phishing pages"

    I agree with Sami; if you had a problem with phishing, then www.phishtank.com would be a logical site to consult: "PhishTank is a collaborative clearing house for data and information about phishing on the Internet."...