McAfee SiteAdvisor Blog

In response to PC Mag's recent review of McAfee Total Protection, we'd like to address some of Neil Rubenking's comments regarding McAfee SiteAdvisor. We respect Neil as a disciplined and thorough software reviewer and reporter. As such, we have been proud of his previous positive review of SiteAdvisor and his advocacy of SiteAdvisor as a PC Mag Staff pick. Neil continues to support SiteAdvisor; in an e-mail to us today he said: "I recommend SiteAdvisor - I run it on my own systems." But a few statements from today's review require some clarification as they primarily reflect differences in philosophy rather than potential program flaws.

Neil checked McAfee SiteAdvisor's rating for 28 sites he deems to be malicious: eight keyloggers, four rogue anti-spyware sites, and 16 spyware sites. Of the 28 sites, he notes that only 11 of them are rated red by SiteAdvisor: the four rogues and eight of the spyware sites (that's 12 by our count).

We'd like to address the other 17:

SiteAdvisor has chosen not to rate commercial keyloggers red. We believe users don't need to be warned about downloads that are clearly marked as keyloggers and are downloaded for that explicit purpose. For example, users do not need to be warned when they are actively looking for monitoring programs from sites like Spectorsoft.com. Spectorsoft.com is even a PC Magazine editor's choice, so it's rather ironic that PC Mag would criticize SiteAdvisor for giving a green rating to a site that they actively recommend to consumers.

Spyware scanners, on the other hand, should detect and flag keylogging programs in case users are unaware of their existence on their PCs. SiteAdvisor warns users about unwanted programs that "sneak" onto users' computers. Therefore, by our philosophy, Neil's eight keyloggers should not be red.

Of the sixteen spyware sites Neil tested, eight were marked red by SiteAdvisor, one was yellow, six were grey, and one was green. A yellow icon encourages users to exercise caution, but implies less severe security problems than a red icon - this is just a matter of degree. A grey icon simply means that a site has not yet been tested. There will always be some sites that are bots are yet to crawl, but rather than rate them green by default, SiteAdvisor clearly lets users know that these sites are still unrated. Neil makes a valid point in calling out the grey sites, although the existence of grey sites has generally not been a source of concern voiced by SiteAdvisor users. The green rated site here is perhaps the only misrated site. Since we were not provided with the specific list of sites Neil used in his tests, we can't adequately address this discrepancy. Even if we give him the benefit of the doubt, one misrated site is a far cry from the 17 that are implicated in Neil's article.

We realize that there will always be differences of opinion when judging Web site safety. This is why McAfee SiteAdvisor's ratings are backed by publicly available data on our site report pages which are further enhanced by user and Web site owner comments. We welcome the debate. We'll admit when we're wrong, but we also stand by our ratings and philosophy.