The good guys are the bad guys? err ..... huh?

7Search.com just gave me a laugh with their article on how to remove the "bad" hosts file as they put it - you know the one, it's the same hosts file offered from myself, SpyBot Search & Destroy, and of course, MVPS.

How to delete the "bad" HOSTS file created by SpyBot, MVPS.org, hpHosts, etc.
http://faq.7search.com/index.php?action=artikel&cat=11&id=276&artlang=en

Why is this so funny? Well actually it's both funny and confusing. Confusing because 7Search also own the very very well known 7FaSSt and BrowserAccelerator (Ref: http://hosts-file.net/?s=browseraccelerator.com). This has long been known as spyware, and indeed, is still hosted on an IP thats filled with other malicious domains.

7Search recently also sued McAfee about their classing 7Search as malware. Why only McAfee? Who knows - their demanding McAfee remove any reference to their peddling malware was a nice touch though (what is it with these people wanting to remove references to nasty stuff they did? irrespective of how old, the user has a right to know).

7Search however, also own 7searcher.com, internetsupervision.com, validatedsites.com, validatedsite.com and trustgauge.com. These sites claim to provide you with information on how "trustworthy" a site is. Coming from a malware distributor, I just had to take a look. Under "Validation Process", they claim;

&When you register with ValidatedSite we immediately go to work validating your business and your website.

The address posted by the site is a genuine postal address where certified mail was sent, received and returned by the site owners.

The personal phone numbers of a website's owners and managers have been called to confirm ownership of a website.

Additional information this organization provides can be made available by clicking on the ValidatedSiteT seal.

Verification that the privacy policy of the site clearly states the safeguards and protection procedures in place for the e-mail addresses, credit card and personal information that visitors release.

The published phone numbers of the website have been called and verified as belonging to the web site.&

Great!, so err, how much does this "process" cost? Well apparently quite a bit;



Okay, for a laugh, lets see how much it would cost me for hpHosts shall we? - thats quite the price there. So what would my visitors see if they wanted to see how trustworthy I was, using their service? see for yourself - not very convincing, unless you want to be convinced to install their spyware. The ads at the top btw, go through ia1.7search.com, nice scam they've got there - you pay them all that money and they still try and make more out of you!.

They also allow you to "preview" what you'd apparently see about a site, when using their toolbar. The results are even more hillarious than before;



So what does it say about VitalSecurity then? A site I most definately DO trust. Not alot apparently, PG's "trust" rating is only 2 (prolly because he's not paid them to say otherwise). Infact, it seems every damn site I trust, has an extremely "low" trust rating.

So should you trust BrowserAccelerator, ValidatedSite, InternetSupervision, TrustGuage, 7Search - whatever they want to call themselves? Personally, I'm going for a resounding NO!. But I'm silly like that, I don't trust anyone that offers malware. I'll let you make your own mind up.

References

http://certifiedbug.com/blog/2008/08/30/7search-files-complaint-over-siteadvisors-spyware-tag/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/28/7search_sues_mcafee/

http://www.emsisoft.com/en/malware/?Adware.ToolBar.7Search.a