Comments on websites
islandregister.com
lun 22 giu 2009 04:27:31 UTC da shazzaDoes anyone know anything about this site please? SA say the site sent them spam
containing a virus and have it red, WOT have it green but no comments.There's a lot
of new reviewers promoting the site right now, but they could just be the site's users.
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/islandregister.co...
- Login o registrati per inviare commenti
I have no idea
lun 22 giu 2009 04:37:40 UTC da ReprotectedCan't help you on this one too much, but notice all those comments in SA are all posted on the same date... Also, click on their usernames and you find out that they all posted only 1 comment, specifically on islandregister.com. Watch out for those losey no good people who do that. You have to do some researching. I can't do much because... well, I suck at this stuff. =P Sorry about this comment.
Also note that when you rate the website, it is your own opinion, whether it is right or wrong, because I can go ahead and rate apple.com RED (quite stupid) because I didn't get my iPod or whatever.
P.S. Don't use SiteAdvisor to bring the ratings to here because WOT and SA are two different communities and owners, we have our ways of rating websites RED, and they have their own ways of rating websites RED.
Just MyWOT and SpywareBlaster, I guess... Found a malicious or fraudulent website? Rate it at WOT ASAP! Found a game hacker? Report it to the game's anti-cheat team! Infected with a virus? Delete it with an antivirus =P
I've had a quick look
lun 22 giu 2009 04:39:57 UTC da shazzaand it just seems to be a directory site. The few links I clicked all took me to other
sites. I will have to have another look later after I've had some sleep.
Hard to be sure...
lun 22 giu 2009 15:04:42 UTC da phantazmReprotected: "all those comments in SA are all posted on the same date"
Almost. The earliest are from 20 June...
I too suspected a load of bogus reviewers. Then again, it could be a genuine reaction from users outraged by a mislabeling from McAfee (and as we probably all know, SA is not a perfect system)
It's an old site, more than 10 years old. Yet there are no red comments at all...
Wot rates it green, although only for trustworthiness. No comments at all...
Conclusion: We need to know more before we reach a conclusion.
Any canadian reviewers around..?
We definately need more .....
lun 22 giu 2009 17:35:52 UTC da MysteryFCMBecause SiteAdvisor does not give any details on the alledged virus they received, they is no way of verifying it (I've found nothing whilst researching, that suggests the site ever delivered a virus, accidentally or otherwise)
Regards
Steven Burn
Ur I.T. Mate Group / hpHosts
it-mate.co.uk / hosts-file.net
re: islandregister.com
lun 22 giu 2009 21:10:52 UTC da g7wGoogle safe browsing diagnostics reports no problems
Listed: 0 time(s)
Shared IP's:
207.96.186.168
207.96.186.169
Created on: 25-May-00
Expires on: 25-May-15
Last Updated on: 13-Jan-09
Administrative Contact:
Hunter, Dave
The Island Register
R.R. #2
Vernon Bridge, Prince Edward Island C0A 2E0
Canada
902-651-2762
Prince Edward Island's Premier Genealogy Home Page
Clean site, nothing malicious, no spam history...
visit and rate based upon experience(s).
I rated it Green.
-------
Against Intuition - gives us safety through Web of Trust.
WOT Community - gives us security through unity.
Thank you all
G7W {G.O.M}
http://g7w.net/
Thank you all!
lun 22 giu 2009 21:29:54 UTC da shazzaI have submitted the site to Site Advisor for retesting, and asked for more info.
It does look ok, and I didnt find any complaints anywhere.
The Island Register
mer 24 giu 2009 19:14:54 UTC da DavePEIHi All:
I am Dave Hunter, the owner of the Island Register Website. I founded the site actually in 1991 when it was placed on a telephone BBS which supported PPP. I soon realized that we were getting calls from fas ar away as California and Vancouver. In January, 1996, I moved it over onto the Internet. It wasn't until 2000 I got its own domain name based upon fears that I would one day have to change to another server, and I wanted it to have a consistent address. In January 1997, on the site's first birthday, I added a counter to the main page, and now have had over 10 million users.
I am going to try to keep this short, but want to tell you a bit more about the page. It takes up over 200 megabytes on the server and has well over 4000 pages of information. It is a Genealogy and History page for Prince Edward Island, Canada's Smallest Province. Many consider it the best place to go for PEI Genealogy (they tell me :-)
When this began with Site Advisor last week, I felt just sick. I have always been very careful with security, and have had a constant battle to keep email robots out. It is a family safe site, and I would love to have you visit.
Regarding the page on S.A. Those people who have left messages are all legitimate users of my site. They have gone on and left messages, and are all real. I wish that S.A. would email them all to confirm their legitimacy. They are all genuine.
Detractors have made as much as 7 postings each, and left comments such as "Bad Shopping Experience" - impossible since the Island Register is free and doesn't sell anything.
Of all the users who have posted, only one left two messages, and she has been chastised (nicely) by me. To me I am furious at the outside reviewers trying to detract from the legitimacy of my users, all have been long time users of my site, and therefore know better than anyone that it is a safe, friendly site.
Sad thing, is I have been unable to get S.A. to re-investigate their rating. I want to thank Shazza for re-submitting the URL for re-testing. I also want to thank phantazm for suggesting I come here to clarify the situation, as well as G7W for his careful evaluation of my Whois data.
I just wanted to re-assure you all that indeed the Island Register is a safe site, and that the users comments on S.A. are genuine.
I must admit, I am fiercely protective of my site - it contains many years of my work, and I consider it my life's work (heck, I don't count the paying job I go to each day as my life's work). The Island Register is. That is why I am so concerned about what is happening and what is being said.Thank you all for giving me a chance to try to clear up this situation..
If anyone has any further questions, I will check in occasionally, and try to answer them to the best of my ability.
Dave.
Hi Dave
mer 24 giu 2009 19:37:49 UTC da shazzaAnd welcome to WOT.
One of the problems with Site Advisor is that the ratings are not moderated,
and the comments there are generally only read by site owners, users &
reviewers.
Did you use this page http://www.siteadvisor.com/userfeedback.html to
request it be retested?
Retesting:
mer 24 giu 2009 19:52:32 UTC da DavePEIHi Shazza:
Yes did actually on the first day we discovered it had been x-rated. Then the next day I called S.A. support, as I had had no reply to my request it be retested. Still no reply.
I still can't understand the statement they made about the Island Register spamming. None of the emails claimed to be from the Island Register are even from Canada, and certainly none from the Island Register. I wish you were allowed to view the headers of those messages.
I have always been highly anti-spam, and do my utmost to keep email gathering robots out of the site.
Dave
I think
mer 24 giu 2009 19:58:36 UTC da shazzathat when they test this aspect, they sign up to websites using a disposable
email account so that every site they test is given a unique email address. So,
any spam received in that email account is attribruted to the site they registered
that particular address to, and not the address it has come from.
Have you tried contacting Mcafee themselves rather than Site Advisor?
Testing
mer 24 giu 2009 23:46:57 UTC da DavePEIYes, one of the site's users living about 2 miles from McAfee's Corporate Office is emailing a contact there, to see if any action has been taken. He is hoping to set up an appointment. I wonder if when they make that "Unique" mailing address if they check to see if it is recently abandoned by another user. I had an email from a person telling in interesting story. A while back she got a brand new email address, and ten minutes after the account opened it had a stream of spam. She was told it had been recently abandoned because of spam by another client, so was still receiving spam destined for the past user. They then issued her an address that had never been used by anyone before, and she never again had any significant problems...
I gather from what they say on S.A. that the virus they received was attached to one of those emails they received. I know they didn't come from the page, as in addition to being paranoid about spam, I also am about viruses. This is in addition to the fact all of the files on the page were scanned clean by them. My own anti-virus definitions are updated daily, and my system scanned at 12 noon each day. I scan each file again before it goes on the server.
I think this is why their rating bothers me most - I am so careful of these things and to keep the site clean.....
Email - used or unique
gio 25 giu 2009 00:11:50 UTC da phantazmDavePEI: "A while back she got a brand new email address, and ten minutes after the account opened it had a stream of spam."
Indeed. I can recognize that story. Last year I opened an alternative yahoo email, ralated to my present username. There was spam in my inbox from the beginning - so it was probably used before me. Still it was weird...
Even more bizarre: Last year one of my friends bought a new computer. First time he turned it on, he discovered that it was already infected. The virus had been on board all the time, just waiting. Luckily it was an old variant, that tried to spread itself but caused no harm beyond that. Even weirder...
If there is a morale, it's that unlikely things may still happen, no matter how unlikely.
I think this is otherwise known as "Murphys law", so it's not exactly news...
Siteadvisor tests a site by offering it a unique email address, not used elsewhere. So if they get spammed they know exactly from where. However, they cannot know for sure: if some spammer tries a lot of randomly created email addresses, hoping that some of them might exist - and then accidentally tries one of Siteadvisors unique addresses. The probability of this is probably very low - but not zero. Well, any system has a weak spot somewhere. And Siteadvisor isn't perfect either...
Email - Used or unique
gio 25 giu 2009 00:09:35 UTC da DavePEII am glad to hear from another who had had that problem. When I heard from her first I thought it a unique event, but when I asked my son about it who is the network controller for Ruranet, he told me several other horror stories.
Regarding your other story about the virus. In 1988, I had an IBM XT with two floppies and no HD. I took it to a local computer store to have a hard drive installed. When I got it home, it came complete with the typical Stoned virus warning. I immediately called the store, and they said, well, you must have had it first on the machine. I reminded them, that it required that a hard disk be installed, and that they were the ones who installed its only hard disk a day before, and that no floppies had been in the machine when it went to them. Sure enough, they scanned all their store software, and 2/3 of it had stoned. Probably a lot of you are too young to remember the Late 80's. That was the day I became paranoid about viruses, got (ironically at that time, McAfee's) and from that day forward did daily updates and scans.
I guess this is getting a bit off-topic, and I apologize.
Possibilty versus probability
gio 25 giu 2009 00:58:02 UTC da phantazmDavePEI: "Sure enough, they scanned all their store software, and 2/3 of it had stoned."
You mean "Stoned Angelina"? I'm quite sure that was the virus my friend discovered. And he was not the only victim either. "The precise number of laptops infected by 'Stoned.Angelina' was unknown but some 10,000 to 100,000 laptops were destined to be sold in Europe's leading retailer Aldi's Danish and German stores. The firm also retails Medion laptops in Britain." Spamfighter.com
DavePEI: "Probably a lot of you are too young to remember the Late 80's."
Probably, but I'm old enough to remember the early 80's. Remember the NewBrain? Actually, this forum is very varied; members come from all corners of the world, and all ages are represented as well...
Back on topic: Siteadvisor started in 2005, but before june 2009 your site didn't have any complaints - no comments at all. Then in March SA discovers a single virus. I think it would help us, if we knew what virus. Have they told you which one it was..?
In any case, I still think the cause may be something very unlikely, but still possible. Let us know when you hear from McAfee. More info would definitely help...
Possibility....
gio 25 giu 2009 01:13:24 UTC da DavePEINo that was the original stoned DOS virus. I am sure there have been many variants of it since gaining in sophistication over the years. If I remember correctly its affect was to print "You are Stoned" or some such thing as the machine booted into DOS. If you never were networked to another machine, or have hard drive in your machine, it was impossible to get unless you had an infected disk in Drive A and an uninfected disk as dirve B- inless youu installed a hard drive which was the cause in my case. The HD installation software transferred it from their disks onto my machine. Those were the days - huge drive - 10 megs!
By the way, if our age is correct on your profile, I am 4 years older than you. I was b. in 1952. No secret, I am an old guy now. Heck, when I was a kid, I used to have a crystal radio and listen to Cousin Brucie and all those good old 50's songs on WABC in my headphones all night.
I will certainly let you know. I would love to see headers of those messages to see where they really originated from. However, I am sure they won't let me see them, as that would give away their "unique" email address. I, too would like to know what virus they discovered in the emails.
We finally got hold of someone in McAfee Corporate today, so as soon as I do have more information, will let you know.
Sirius
gio 25 giu 2009 02:28:44 UTC da BobJamDavePEI: "Cousin Brucie"
He and WolfManJack have a show on Sirius radio now. It's called "60's on 60" (the satellite I get it on is channel 6060). They play all 60's tunes . . . cool.
BTW, I've got you by 5 years . . . b. 1947.
Cousin Brucie
gio 25 giu 2009 11:26:08 UTC da DavePEII must give a listen for that. I lived in Brockville, Ontario then, and we summered in PEI, and with the old clear channel AM stations we could always hear WABC and Cousin Brucie from both locations, and when propagation was good, we could hear Wolfman. Those were the days. On that topic, the younger members of WOT must see us as old fogies. Great that there are some of us left - we just get better with age.
On a more related note, have a look at the Island Register's rating on S.A. now!
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/islandregister.co...
re: DavePEI
gio 25 giu 2009 01:11:45 UTC da g7wWelcome to WOT Mr. Hunter.
I hope this is a "keeper" for you and not just a quick means to an end concerning your PEI site.
Yeah, I remember the 80's.
I started out with a TRS-80 - the portable Model 4 (I think), dual DSDD 5-1/2" floppies, no HD, and Visicalc and Profile IV as the "main" software, with TRS-DOS (CP/M) OS. And to think when I graduated to that ATI 286 with a Hercules monochrome CGI card with a 1200 BAUD modem and my Prodigy and CompuServe accounts - that was "hi tech" in those days, LOL.
-------
Against Intuition - gives us safety through Web of Trust.
WOT Community - gives us security through unity.
Thank you all
G7W {G.O.M}
http://g7w.net/
Hello to you. Thank you for
gio 25 giu 2009 01:59:27 UTC da DavePEIHello to you. Thank you for all your work looking up stats and Whois information for my site. It is nice to see someone that actually researches before jumping on the bandwagon.
Yes, my first home machine was a Timex-Sinclair TS1000? I think? made in England, then I went through a series of Commodore Pets, Vic-20's, Commodore 64's, then XT, 286 (also with Hercules and 1200 baud), 386, 486 and Pentiums, various generations and somewhere in there also had a TRS-80. At the time, I was doing a lot of programming in basic, developing programs such as RTTY and morse programs, locators, and beam heading programs for Ham Radio.
Actually my first computer experience came back in 1971 when I worked from a company named Instronics, and I actually walked inside a steaming hot univac replacing triodes. Then came Dec PDP 8's etc. Then I got away from computers until the mid 1980's when home computers began to come available.
Nice to meet you.
Oh, and yes, there is such a different attitude around here - I think I will stick around. I think it is a "keeper"!
Undergraduate Research
gio 25 giu 2009 02:59:59 UTC da BobJamI did graduate research in Physical Chemistry using a PDP-12 and Assembly language in the early 70's.
In the 70's...
gio 25 giu 2009 02:57:49 UTC da phantazmBack then I was learning how to use a slide rule... ;-)
Things have certainly changed since then,
and Moores Law is still alive.
We aint seen nothing yet...
Wow!
gio 25 giu 2009 11:26:43 UTC da DavePEIHi Guys!
I just had to tell you all. McAfee and Site Advisor has corrected and revised their rating for the Island Register back to green as of this morning! No explanation yet as to why, but I am thankful. I and the many users who posted to S.A.'s site knew it was a safe site, but it is nice to have vindication.
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/islandregister.co...
I wish I had some answers to questions I have as to those emails claimed to be from the Register - perhaps I will hear back from them - in the meantime, I can only be thankful they corrected the rating.
Don't worry g7w, I will be sticking with you all. I will watch for a little while to learn more about the rating process before doing a lot of ratings, but I will be here. Accordingly, I have just spent a long time reading the information in the Support section on rating. I do caution you - I will be very careful when rating, as a result of my experience with S.A. Until I get more experienced, a site will have to be really bad before I rate them (i.e. trojans, spyware, dangerous downloads, etc.) , or on the converse side extremely good and family friendly.
Thanks to all of you for your reasonable approach to rating, for the advice you have given, and for being a great bunch of people.
Hi Dave!
gio 25 giu 2009 11:40:10 UTC da shazzaI received an email earlier saying they were looking at your site, but I see they've
removed the comments about spam/ virus as well as changing the rating. Hopefully
they will let you know their reasons or apologise for their mistake.
I hope you have no further problems with this.
Hi Shazza
gio 25 giu 2009 12:57:41 UTC da DavePEII do hope I will hear from them with an explanation.
It was an upsetting situation, and I would like to know exactly why it happened.
Meanwhile I feel a lot better. I do know this experience will teach me to be a very careful reviewer, checking out each site thoroughly. It will keep my numbers of reviews down, but then again, it isn't about numbers, it. is about accuracy.
I don't think they are
sab 07 nov 2009 14:17:05 UTC da Milka86I don't think they are sending spam or virus. Sometimes those pages are popped up because Google think they are spammer, but not always. If you still curious about the site, you can always hire a freelancer at Freelancer.com to check it out. They can do it very easy with relatively low commission. Use this code "FAMILYTREE" to get even better bid. Good luck.
Milka Giordano
@ DavePEI
gio 25 giu 2009 13:20:41 UTC da cotojoWelcome to WOT.
Sadly, good sites frequently come under attack and get rated down for many reasons....I know, I've been there too, but on the other hand there are many who will evaluate sites honestly by doing much more than looking at the surface and this does make a huge difference and the ratings soon get moved back to where they should be.
As to why sites are maliciously rated for no good reason, there are the minority that will always do this...that's how they get their kicks....sad people, but for the site owners it can be very distracting to say the least. the majority of webmasters do run good, safe and clean sites but the unscrupulous webmasters don't like this.
I agree that it is not about numbers, accuracy counts for everything when reviewing. It has to be honest and impartial and the reviewers I know will also back up their ratings with comments and will look at each site differently and rate accordingly.
Any site that is reasonably popular in its own niche area will attract a small number of bad reviews, but those reviewers will have never visited the site and have no facts to substantiate their claims.
I have visited the site and it is packed with information, there are no malicious links, no malware and everything comes back nice and clean.
It's a Green from me too and will also visit SA later and comment there :-)
Colin
http://freepcsecurity.co.uk
"If you have knowledge, let others light their candles with it" - Winston Churchill
Thanks, Colin! Needless to
gio 25 giu 2009 13:26:39 UTC da DavePEIThanks, Colin!
Needless to say it has been very distracting for me the past few days. I am glad they finally corrected their rating. Still, I hope they do email me and tell me what happened to cause it.
Thank you for your kind comments.
@ DavePEI
gio 25 giu 2009 13:31:01 UTC da cotojoYou're most welcome.
Have also been to SA and posted a review.
It is distracting when this happens and can also be demoralising, but always remember there are more good guys than bad and the bad have their moments but are short lived :-)
Colin
http://freepcsecurity.co.uk
"If you have knowledge, let others light their candles with it" - Winston Churchill
Green
gio 25 giu 2009 13:37:37 UTC da SpiderLoverI went over to your site on SiteAdvisor with this buddy.
Thanks!
gio 25 giu 2009 13:42:29 UTC da DavePEII want to thank you and all. I hope I will be as good a reviewer as all of you.