The Online Trust Alliance Doesn’t Seem Too Trustworthy

When it comes to words that might be reasonably associated with the web security company SiteLock one of them isn’t “trust”. You don’t have to look farther that Google’s search suggestions to see that:

Google;s second search suggestion for "sitelock" is "sitelock scams".

But if you do want to look farther you could look at the situation where with a couple of their services, their content delivery network (CDN) and web application firewall (WAF) services, they promote the services as if they themselves provide them. For example, they use phrases including “SiteLock servers“, “SiteLock patent-pending technology“, and “our IP addresses“. But in reality the service are provided by another company, Incapsula. Beyond just having a security company lie about something that there doesn’t seem to be a need to, the lie is rather troubling because both of those service involve sending a website’s traffic through a third-party’s systems. While SiteLock’s customers are told those systems are theirs, it turns out they belong to a company that the customers neither are aware or have a business relationship with. That raises some pretty obvious privacy and security concerns.

Based on that we don’t understand how an organization named the Online Trust Alliance would think it is appropriate to name SiteLock to their “Online Trust Audit and Honor Roll”, as announced by a SiteLock press release.

The press release lists what is evaluated for that:

As the only comprehensive, independent online trust benchmark study, the ninth annual OTA Online Trust Audit evaluates websites in three categories: consumer protection, responsible privacy practices and security. Based on a composite weighted analysis, sites that scored 80 percent or better overall, without failing in any one category, received Honor Roll status.

If you look at the complaints from SiteLock customers it sounds like the public is need of protection from SiteLock (just last week looked at an example of SiteLock trying to sell a customer on getting unneeded work done). As for security, while SiteLock’s website may be secure, that isn’t even the case for customers included in SiteLock’s cases studies.


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