I just had a client tell me that her website kept having a question mark instead of a green checkmark like her competitors websites had when she went to Google to check. I’d not heard of such a thing, so I did some checking.
Seems that Norton has come up with a little revenue enhancement project preying on the fear of malware. This client had Norton installed on her personal computer and probably their “toolbar” in her browser. When she went to find out what she had to do to get her website “approved”, they required a registration - with plenty of her private info, I’m sure - and then sent her code to be put on her website index.html page.
After the code was applied and a “special” file with another code was installed in the base directory, then she had to “register” the site URL and in “two to three weeks”, after they “investigated” the site and found it free of malware, they would show her site as “safe”. I think the scam is called “Web Secure” or something.
McAfee’s must be “TrustedSource”. Apparently McAfee has done the same thing, only I’m sure it’s proprietary to their software and site owners have to register their sites just like Norton’s proprietary scam.
What I told her was that this was a way to get her information into their database, in addition to what they collect already because she “subscribes” to their bloatware Krap(tm) that phones home and that this probably wasn’t as benign a program as she thought.
Naturally, she said she wanted to do it anyway, so I installed everything they required. But I advised her to get rid of Norton completely off her computer and go with a better anti-virus program or security suite. NOT McAfee.
This is a big scam, preying on naive users, collecting their data to mine for advertising revenue or sell to scammers and spammers. Because once her website is “scanned” for malware, unless it is rescanned 24/7, the little green checkmark and “certification” means nothing, as malware could be installed after the scan.
I’ve just watched Norton/McAfee become total scammers and ripoff artists over the past 15 years. Their programs are the very first things I’ll wipe from a computer and it will run better immediately.
As I told my client, I don’t have an antivirus program on my internet connected Windoze computer and I don’t have any problem. But I don’t do stupid things like using IE or Outlook or clicking on links that would get me infected. Recently, for almost all my web surfing, I use a Linux box behind a router, behind a switch. Not gonna be a problem.
So the best thing you can do is get rid of McAfee and go with something like AVG or Avast or any of the other free antivirus programs. McAfee and Norton have been in bed with the malware purveyors and ad servers for a long time.
I’m not saying that WZ isn’t a problem, but I KNOW that Norton/McAfee ARE problems. I won’t let either one of them on a machine that I control.