Web trust symbol can't be trusted
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.
27 September 2006
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