{"id":565,"date":"2011-03-09T06:50:19","date_gmt":"2011-03-09T11:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/?p=565"},"modified":"2011-03-09T06:51:20","modified_gmt":"2011-03-09T11:51:20","slug":"safe-surfing-toolbars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/safe-surfing-toolbars\/","title":{"rendered":"Safe Surfing Toolbars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time, Ben Edelman, a really smart guy who fought – and still \t\tfights – against the scams, spyware and trickery on the Internet, \t\tinvented a toolbar called “Site Advisor”. And we saw it and said “It is \t\tgood.” And it was.<\/p>\n

In those days, browsers didn’t come with anti-phishing protection, and \t\tSite Advisor was a great tool; it helped users avoid being scammed and \t\ttricked by phishing sites and other unsavory sites with less than \t\thonorable intentions.<\/p>\n

As with so many things that are really good, big companies – some, whose \t\tonly motivation is money and profits – come along and snatch up the good \t\tstuff and use them to goad users into buying other products and increase \t\ttheir profits. It’s all about the money. And when it’s all about the \t\tmoney, you can be sure of one thing: It’s not all about you. The \t\tstandard capitalistic, business model shows that competition will \t\t(eventually) weed out the weak or bad products. But we’re talking about \t\tthe brave new world here – we’re talking about The Internet. Rules which \t\tworked in the old world don’t necessarily work in the new world.<\/p>\n

Anyway, McAfee bought Site Advisor and now uses it as a tool to sell \t\tother McAfee product – including a “Professional” version of Site \t\tAdvisor. You really have to laugh at how the word “Professional” is \t\tthrown around. There isn’t a professional in the world who’d use \t\tMcAfee’s Site Advisor, at least none we can think of. Most professionals \t\tcan tell a good site from a bad site or a phishing site without McAfee’s \t\thelp – or even a browser’s anti-phishing protection. So who are the \t\tprofessionals out there that these professional versions are for?<\/p>\n

The Internet is nothing if not viral. One success breeds another. After \t\tSite Advisors’ success, a company called Web Of Trust decided to \t\tcapitalize on the safe surfing toolbar craze that Site Advisor started. \t\tBut WOT had a different idea. Instead of just warning users of dangerous \t\tsites, they decided to be even more subjective and tell you which sites \t\tto avoid – a sort of glorified censorship toolbar.<\/p>\n

And we will be honest and tell you this: At first we were very excited \t\tto see that McAfee finally had some competition and we jumped on the WOT \t\tbandwagon. We installed it even though we know a good site from a bad \t\tsite, a scam from a deal, and a trick from a treat. If we recommend \t\tsomething, you can be sure that we use it.<\/p>\n

It didn’t take more than a few months to see how WOT worked. It didn’t \t\ttake too long for us to see that they had fallen into “the more the \t\tbetter” trap. In other words, the more “bad” things WOT’s toolbar \t\tdetects, the better its users think it is working for them. Of course \t\tthat’s not true, but it does cause people to think it is. WOT has grown \t\texponentially and is now a major competitor to McAfee – no easy task \t\tconsidering McAfee is a very large and established, publically-traded \t\tcorporation.<\/p>\n

McAfee’s Site Advisor is bad enough, but we don’t think users need a \t\ttoolbar to be a “Consumer’s Report” toolbar – giving users slated, \t\tbiased, opinions about products or services they’ve never tested – or \t\teven checked out. User opinions of products or services are important \t\tbut should never be used as a basis for ruining a product or site’s \t\treputation. As most of you, who’ve read forums on the Internet, those \t\twho are satisfied with a product or service are less likely to comment \t\tabout it on forums – in most cases. But the ones who had a bad \t\texperience or who had problems, are the most vocal. People do love to \t\tcomplain, and sometimes they have a right to complain. But a safe \t\tsurfing toolbar’s job is to keep you safe on the Internet, not to rate \t\tproducts or services.<\/p>\n

WOT’s problems run deep. Rather than concentrating their efforts to \t\tprotect their users from truly dangerous sites, WOT uses subjectivity – \t\tnot objectivity to decide which sites get warnings. The result is that \t\ttoo many sites which are not dangerous get warnings, making WOT \t\tinaccurate and sometimes annoying. Site ratings should not be based on \t\thearsay, disgruntled customers’ complaints, or some person’s idea of a protective “HOST file” \t\tsite. But if you don’t use WOT it won’t matter how or why they rate \t\tsites the way they do, right?<\/p>\n

You can’t rely on WOT because it warns you that all advertising (except \t\tGoogle) is dangerous or undesirable. Well, it may well be undesirable, \t\tbut it is not dangerous. Well may it is dangerous if you buy things from \t\tinfomercials or egg peelers or spray-on hair from Ron Popeil. Seriously, \t\tadvertising helps pay the bills so that many excellent sites can remain \t\tfree. We don’t hear people complaining about advertising on TV anymore – \t\tit keeps broadcast TV free – and has done so since the beginning of \t\ttelevision broadcasts. For a “safe surfing” toolbar to rate ad networks \t\tsuch as DoubleClick as “dangerous” or “bad” is simply baffling to us – \t\tespecially considering WOT considers Google safe and Google owns \t\tDoubleClick. Summarily dismissing most advertising networks as \t\t“dangerous” and rating service or programs as undesirable, without \t\ttesting and trying those products or services, is just plain wrong. It \t\tleads to a lot of errors and it has mad WOT’s toolbar a very poor choice \t\tfor consumers.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

So what’s the point? The point is that safe surfing toolbars aren’t necessary anymore, because whether you use Safari, Internet Explorer, Chrome or Firefox, anti-phishing defense is built-in to each of them – and it works. So, if you’re using McAfee’s Site Advisor or WOT or some other safe surfing toolbar, you should think carefully about keeping it. If you’re using the current version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer, you have anti-phishing protection and protection from fraudulent sites – and the protection is very good.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the basic tenants of good computing is: keep it simple. Don’t install programs you don’t need or you wont use. The less programs you have installed the better. Adding toolbars to any browser should be done with care. Toolbars can and do affect browser performance.<\/p>\n

If you don’t need something, don’t install it. Browsers have become better and now include anti-phishing protection. Most of you don’t need a safe-surfing toolbar anymore, especially one that attempts to rate products and services without thoroughly testing them first. Think carefully before installing a safe-surfing toolbar; if you have one installed, ask yourself if you really need it anymore. Is it confusing you? Is it annoying you with warnings on sites you’ve used before and have come to trust? If you’re using the most recent version of any of the top Web browsers, maybe it’s time you uninstalled your safe surfing toolbar.<\/p>\n

If you don’t need it, why have it?<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time, Ben Edelman, a really smart guy who fought – and still fights – against the scams, spyware and trickery on the Internet, invented a toolbar called “Site Advisor”. And we saw it and said “It is good.” And it was. In those days, browsers didn’t come with anti-phishing protection, and Site Advisor was a\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[361,357,358,359,138,360,161,331,21,362,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":567,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565\/revisions\/567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}