Bob Sullivan of MSNBC has written another compelling story on his Red Tape Chronicles blog about efforts to muzzle one of our favorite tools for sniffing out suspicious sites, Whois.

Since the Internet's inception, all Web site owners have been required to provide contact information when registering a new Internet domain, information which is then made available via "Whois."

"It's one of the first things we teach consumers to do, look up the Whois information," WebWatch director Beau Brendler told Bob when interviewed for the story. "Brendler, a recent appointee to an ICANN advisory board studying the issue, is a vocal opponent of shutting down Whois access. 'There needs to be a way for consumers to get at this information.'"

But as others--including Beau's ICANN colleague Wendy Seltzer--disagree, and view Whois as nothing less than an invasion of privacy. Here's what she had to say:

"I feel quite strongly that privacy should be respected here for free speech and First Amendment principles," Seltzer, now a staff member at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said. "Individuals should be able to speak anonymously online. They should be able to register sites without ever giving their real name."

What do you think?

Posted by Jorgen Wouters at 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Steve from Pittsburgh, one of the posters to Bob Sullivan's DONE! SEO story today on reputation scrubbing, remarks: "This is very disingenuous. The internet is a libertarian place, and if you have shoddy customer relations, people will make it known. All we need next is for a place like ConsumerWebWatch to publish a list of all of the clients of DONE! SEO so we know who not to do business with."
Actually, DONE! SEO has done it for you (though if I were hiring them to "manage my reputation" I'm not sure I would want them telling everyone that on their site):
http://www.doneseo.com/clients/index.html
Paramount Pictures
Sun Microsystems Inc. (which is actually a sort of partner of ours, through funding StopBadware.org)

International Center for Vasectomy Reversal (DadsAgain.com)
Dermacia (which makes "breathable foundation" makeup)
Exclusive Resorts
Family Cord Blood Services
Halos Sunglasses
Mpix
eCreditCards.com (a "DONE! Ventures" company started by DONE! SEO's Ben Padnos)CashFlowFromCreditCards.com (another Ben Padnos company)
innovatemedia
...and, at least, since I printed out this page last week:
Webloyalty (their logo has disappeared from this page now).
Interestingly, the only company on this list whom we have published anything about, positive or negative, is Webloyalty.

Posted by Beau Brendler at 01:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There's an interesting story by MSNBC's Bob Sullivan about 'reputation scrubbing' and gaming search engines when consumers say something bad about a company, written in the wake of a marketing campaign we discovered by DONE! SEO a week or so ago. The story's generated a good number of posts in half a day. We'd be interested in your comments.

Posted by Beau Brendler at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Healthwise, an Idaho-based health information content provider, wrote the following letter to WebWatch regarding our most recent ratings of the 20 most-trafficked health information sites. Healthwise provides content to some of the sites, so therefore was not subject to a rating. Follow the link to read the whole letter, published here unedited, as we publish all our letters.

September 6, 2007

Dear Mr. Brendler,

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the recent Health Web Site Ratings project.
For 33 years the nonprofit mission of Healthwise has been to help people make better health decisions, so we applaud your efforts to help consumers choose credible and helpful information on the Web.

I understand that your goal was to rate each Web site, and not the content providers. I am hopeful, though, that this may be an opportunity for consumers to learn that there can be multiple content providers at health Web sites, and therefore variability in terms of editorial practices.

Perhaps in the future your methodology could reflect greater consistency in your reviews and comments about each Web site's content. For example, rather than write, "Raters were unable to find editorial policies and procedures," perhaps say (if true, of course) that "Editorial policies and procedures were available from some content providers, such as CONTENT PROVIDER NAME(S), but not from others, such as NAME(S)." This level of specificity was provided in some of the reviewer comments, but not all. The inconsistency may be misleading to consumers.

All of us at Healthwise are solely focused on helping people make better health decisions. We follow a rigorous content development and update process, including medical review. The Healthwise Knowledgebase includes in-depth, decision-focused and action-oriented information on more than 8,000 topics. We make transparent to consumers the information that we believe helps them determine the value of our materials---editorial policies, author and reviewer information, reference citations, last-update dates, a comment process, and more.

Again, thank you for your efforts to educate consumers, and for the opportunity to comment.

Sincerely,

Karen Baker, MHS
Senior Vice President
Healthwise

Posted by Beau Brendler at 04:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)