StopBadware.org - Incompetence or McCarthyism 2.0?
Home > News	February 5, 2007 1:00 PM

Urgent call for help to our readers: We are one of many innocent sites that have been blacklisted by Google/StopBadware. You can help us out by giving us a digg (click the icon to the left). Digg is a really cool social networking news site that lets people vote for interesting sites on the web. If you aren't already using it, you should - it takes just two minutes or so to register.

Joe McCarthy was a senator of Wisconsin form the late '40s to late 50's who was responsible for what became known as the "Second Red Scare". If you didn't hear about him in history class or missed the recent movie, "Good Night and Good Luck", Joe McCarthy accused thousands of Americans of being Communists or communist sympathizers. Many of these people suffered loss of employment, lost their careers, or were even thrown in jail. It turned out in the end that Senator McCarthy's witch hunts were little more than an abuse of power, a way to scare others for his own benefit.

One of the lessons we were supposed to learn from that period was that character assassinations by those in power could happen anytime, anywhere.

We've been following the progress of a couple of sites designed to help people avoid badware for about a year now: SiteAdvisor and StopBadware.org. SiteAdvisor was a small startup that used automated tools to find spyware, adware, and trojans on the web and report their findings to anyone for free. They were later sold to McAfee, who has integrated it into their security products. StopBadware was formed from a coalition of companies including Google, Harvard Law School, and Sun Microsystems for the similar purpose of both identifying harmful websites and educating web users about these sites.

Their motivation is commendable, but are they really achieving what they claim to?

The answer may surprise you. In short, we've found SiteAdvisor's data to be perhaps incomplete at times, but certainly top-notch. It's so reliable that we've been able to use it to source some of the newest spyware for use in our product tests.

In contrast, we can say with certainty that StopBadware's list of rogue websites needs some serious quality control. We've identified a number of sites that StopBadware claims may "harm your computer", but do not...

Including Us

We were shocked to pull this screenshot just a few minutes ago which shows Google has blacklisted us:


Screenshot showing how Google has blacklisted us based on StopBadware.org's recommendation

So, we've been blacklisted. Using a few common internet tools, we've been able to discern that Google also dropped all of our search engine rankings around the same time that StopBadware mistakenly identified us as being a "badware" site.

We admit it, we're not happy about it. But is it unfair of us to compare StopBadware to McCarthyism? You decide when you see their report on us below:


StopBadware's report on us. Notice no details about their testing results.

Notice that Google/StopBadware claims that we are hosting or distributing badware. The URL itself points to a directory listing (which we should and will close off when the dust settles), but inspection of this directory shows only two binary files: lspfix.exe and an old version of cwshredder... both tools designed to fix spyware problems.

So the analogy stands - Joe McCarthy (Google/StopBadware) accuses someone (us) of being communists (distributing spyware) without any evidence to support their claim.

In contrast, SiteAdvisor, a reputable anti-spyware scan technology, shows exactly what they found and what their basis is for any claims they make about a site. You can check out their analysis of us here: http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/adwarereport.com.

Let's put forth a few facts in our defense:

• We were one of the first sites to report SpyAxe and its clones, the scamware programs that bilked $40 each from thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of innocent victims. This was way back in December, 2005.
• We are one of the leading sites which over the past several years has educated people about ineffective products such as Spyware Cleaner, Spy Hunter, and others ... some of which were later shut down by the FTC.
• We were the FIRST site on the net to publicize a fix for the Flooder.AKE bug that caused many AVG users to reformat their computers. Our fix was widely copied and spread over the internet, without credit, on such places as Yahoo Answers and other security sites. During the first 24 hours, there were no search results on Google or Yahoo for "flooder.ake", so we spent several thousand dollars to purchase advertising on the search engines in order to help people with this. Check out the comments on that article to read the feedback from those we helped.
• This should go without saying, but we have never distributed or promoted any type of badware, including: spyware, rogue products, popups, popunders, adware, viruses, trojans, etc. In fact, we've never distributed any software from our website at all. Our content has been limited to text and photos only. You are and always have been 100% safe here.

For you webmasters out there, here was how this false accusation by StopBadware affected us. Be warned, it could happen to you:

• We dropped off of nearly every one of the 50 keywords for which we were ranked in the top 10 on Google.
• DMOZ dropped our directory listing.
• Our web traffic has declined by 70%

How You Can Help

If this site has helped you in the past, or if it's helping you right now, you can support us by doing the following:

• Email StopBadware at appeals@stopbadware.org and let them know about their mistake. Ask them to correct it immediately.
• Perform a search for us on Google for appropriate terms such as "spyware reviews" or "adwarereport". Submit a poor quality report to Google. Let them know that they are basing their search results on poor data coming from StopBadware.org.
• If you are an editor on DMOZ, please look into why we were deleted from your directory and help us correct the problem. If you aren't an editor, contact DMOZ and ask them to reinstate us.
• Link to us from your website. Spread the word about StopBadware or simply let others know about us.

Finally, for a better site that does a much better job of identifying badware sites, check out McAfee's Site Advisor. Their results are top-notch and they even have a browser plugin which can save your butt from time to time.

Don't be evil, Google!

More Good Articles on StopBadware / Google badness:

• StopBadware blacklists cartoon book site
• What to Do When Google Tells People Your Website is Dangerous?