Summary is our overall rating for the Web site. We determine this rating by looking at a wide variety of information. First, we evaluate a Web site's e-mail and download practices using our proprietary data collection and analysis techniques. Next, we examine the Web site itself to see if it engages in annoying practices such as excessive pop-ups or requests to change your home page. Then we perform an analysis of its online affiliations to see if the site associates with other sites flagged as red. Finally, we combine our own review of suspicious sites with feedback from our volunteer reviewers and alert you to sites that are deemed suspicious.
Established indicates the year the domain name was registered. More recently registered Web sites have had less time to prove their safety and trustworthiness.
Country indicates where a domain is registered. Keep in mind that it's sometimes more difficult to get good customer service or resolve disputes with Web sites registered outside of your country of residence.
Popularity indicates how popular the Web site is. Don't assume, however, that popularity always goes hand in hand with safety. For example, some very popular prize sites send lots of spam, and some very popular file-sharing programs bundle adware. Likewise, many personal Web sites, blogs and small business sites that do not get a lot of traffic can be safe to browse and use. That's why the analysis behind SiteAdvisor's overall verdict is so useful.
E-mail Results is SiteAdvisor's overall rating for a Web site's e-mail practices. We rate sites based on both how much e-mail we receive after entering an address on the site as well as how spammy the e-mail we receive looks. If either of these measures is higher than what we consider acceptable, we'll give the site a yellow warning. If both measures are high, or one of them looks particularly egregious, we'll give the site a red warning.
Downloads indicates SiteAdvisor's overall rating about the impact a site's downloadable software had on our testing computer. Red flags are given to sites that have virus-infected downloads or that add unrelated software which many people would consider adware or spyware. The rating also takes note of the network servers a program contacts during its operation, as well as any modifications to browser settings or a computer's registry files.
Online Affiliations examines how aggressively the site tries to get you to go to other sites that we've flagged with red verdicts. It is a very common practice on the Internet for suspicious sites to have many close associates with other suspicious sites. The primary purpose of these "feeder" sites is to get you to visit the suspicious site. A site can receive a red warning if, for example, it links too aggressively to other red sites. In effect, a site can become "red by association" due to the nature of its relationship to red flagged domains.
Annoyances are common Web practices that get on users' nerves, such as excessive pop-ups, requests to change a user's homempage or requests to add a site to the browser's favorites list. We also list 3rd party cookies (sometimes known as "tracking cookies") in this section. If a Web site has a lot of pop-ups and in particular, if it engages in practices such as popping up more windows when you try to close them, we will give that Web site a red flag.
Exploits are rare but extremely dangerous security threats caused by a Web site "exploiting" a browser's security vulnerability. The exploit can cause the user's computer to receive programming code which can cause adware infections, keystroke spying, and other malicious actions which can leave a computer essentially unusable.
Reviewer and Site Owner Comments lets reviewers and site owners provide additional information and commentary to supplement SiteAdvisor's automated test results..
Results summarizes the comments of SiteAdvisor's entire reviewer community. Reviewers can rate sites for downloads, e-mail practices, shopping experiences and more. This input is particularly important in helping the SiteAdvisor community guide each other concerning e-commerce Web sites. Anonymous input alone is not enough to change a site's overall rating, but sufficient votes from registered users can affect a site's rating.
Web site owner comments allows owners of analyzed Web sites to address our ratings. Owners are free to comment, disagree or clarify. These comments are posted unedited after we verify the authenticity of the person leaving the comment. We manually review all owner comments and if an error was made, we will try our best to promptly correct it. We don't allow sites to pay to be rated or to change or improve their ratings.
Reviewer comments shows what our volunteer reviewers have to say about this Web site. These comments are posted unedited.
Overall is SiteAdvisor's overall rating for a Web site's e-mail practices. We rate sites based on both how much e-mail they send as well as how spammy the e-mail we receive from them looks. If either of these measures is higher than what we consider acceptable, we'll give the site a yellow warning. If both measures are high, or one of them looks particularly egregious, we'll give the site a red warning.
SiteAdvisor uses unique e-mail addresses for each and every sign-up form we encounter. This allows us to know which exact sign up form caused us to receive each individual e-mail, even if e-mails are sent from different senders. (As you can imagine, we get lots of spam in our inbox. Actually, we get far more than you do. We just happen to know why we got each particular piece of e-mail.)
How Much Email describes both the volume and spamminess of the e-mail we received as a result of registering at this Web site.
The volume number you see is the weekly or monthly average quantity of e-mails we received since we signed up.
The SpamAssassin score you see is a measure of an e-mail's spamminess. Spamminess may be a made up word, but its score is based on hard facts and data. To reach a number, SiteAdvisor uses definitions from SpamAssassin, an open-source spam filter. Low or negative numbers indicate low or no spamminess in the e-mails received. Higher numbers indicate increasing spamminess. The vast majority of sites that send e-mail earn scores between -5 and +20.
Spamminess measures an e-mail's commercial content and whether the e-mail employs tricks known to be used by spammers attempting to get through anti-spam filters. Since SiteAdvisor proactively signs up at the Web sites we review, we're asking for whatever it is they say they're going to send us. In that sense, some of the e-mails that we receive that get a high spamminess rating from SpamAssassin's definitions may not violate the CAN-SPAM Act or other legal or industry definitions of spam. Our goal with this score is to be able to tell you what could happen if you sign-up to, so you know whether you want to opt in yourself.
Sample Inbox shows what your inbox might look like after submitting your e-mail address to a site. These are samples of actual e-mails we received from this site. The subject headlines and "Sender" addresses are real, though slightly abbreviated and masked to obscure any identifying information.
Where Do These E-mails Come From helps you understand the origins of the e-mail you might receive when you sign up at a particular site.
Table A lists the top 10 senders of e-mail ranked by the percentage of e-mail received from that sender. Typically, the sender and the reviewed site are 100% the same. If the senders in this list do not correspond to the name of the reviewed site, it can simply mean that the site owner uses a bulk e-mail provider to send its e-mail content. However, it can also mean that our e-mail address was sold, rented or traded to these third party senders. Unless they make it clear that they will do this to your personal information, this could be a violation of the site's privacy policy. A final possibility is that the address was stolen, suggesting that the reviewed site's security practices may not be sufficiently strong.
Table B lists other Web sites in our database that share similar "senders." Higher scores indicate more shared senders. Lower scores indicate fewer. Two companies might score high simply by using the same bulk e-mailer. However, in some cases, Web sites may be shells for the same company, or may indicate that they have bought and sold your e-mail address. As above, unless they make it clear that they will do this, this could be a violation of the site's privacy policy.
For an even more detailed look at how we evaluate a Web site's e-mail practices, take a look at our blog entry titled Tracking Spam Back to Its Roots.
Our download pages summarize our test results of one or more of the downloadable programs available on the reviewed site. For Web sites with more than one analyzed download, SiteAdvisor lists a summary of our test results for each program. For each download found, we automatically install it and test it on a fresh computer. A site must have at least one red flagged download to earn its own red flag. Sites that aggregate dozens, hundreds or even thousands of downloads can be special cases. If the aggregator tries to filter out dangerous programs but ends up offering a couple red programs, we will mark the aggregator as yellow.
Overall Findings summarizes the results of our download tests. For example, we look for the digital signatures of programs that some people consider to be spyware, adware or other unwanted programs. We document what, if any, modifications the download made to our browser settings, registry and hard drive. And we show what network servers were contacted.
Nuisance Score measures how the reviewed program changed our browsing experience, if at all. When we find a program that bundles a particular piece of software, we list the name of that program along with a link to its Pest Patrol description. We have no relationship with Pest Patrol, by the way. We simply think they have a nice, publicly accessible database of programs that they consider to be unwanted.
SiteAdvisor also synthesizes and quantifies this data into a proprietary "nuisance score" that gives you an at-a-glance guide to help you decide whether to download a program. Programs are scored from zero to 10. Low scores result from minor nuisances like changed home pages. Higher scores result from bundled software that some consider unwanted programs. Bundling more than one low-score nuisance can push a download into the red zone as well.
How does it modify my system? answers two of the most common questions many expert computer users ask about downloadable software. When SiteAdvisor installs a download onto a fresh computer, we track in exact detail the changes the program makes to that computer's registry and hard drive. Often, malicious or annoying software can be identified by its digital "signature," a unique set of changes it makes to a computer's software.
Network activity tracks whether the downloaded software automatically communicates with other computers on the Internet. SiteAdvisor identifies which of these network servers are contacted, and names the ones that our analysis shows are associated with spyware, adware, or other unwanted programs. The presence of network traffic alone does not signal badness. It is which servers are being called and how many of them are associated with malware. Use SiteAdvisor's network activity data as a common sense check against software that takes "liberties" with your Internet connection.
Other information is a collection of additional data we've assembled about the software. The title of the download is taken from the program itself. Where possible, we try to provide you with the URL of the creator of the program. The creator is often different than the distributor. We also provide a direct hyperlink to the download. "Program ID" and "Full Checksum" are unique SiteAdvisor identifiers and help us catalog our data and your input about our analysis. When possible, we also provide you with the date of our download testing to help you determine whether the current download you're seeking advice about has been updated since our tests.
For an even more detailed look at how we evaluate a Web site's downloads, take a look at our blog entry titled The Down Low on Nasty Downloads.