Due to economic considerations, Consumers Union has decided to shut down Consumer Reports WebWatch as of July 31, 2009.

Along with our parent site, Consumer Reports WebWatch, the UnSponsored Link will remain online as a consumer resource, but we'll no longer be able to follow-up on your comments or investigation requests. As such, for our last post, we’d like to highlight some of the techniques we’ve used to uncover the dozens of online scams we’ve exposed in this blog. We hope you’ll be able to use these methods to spot an online scam before you find yourself scammed.

1. Does the site provide full contact information?
Credible Web sites should clearly disclose the physical location where they are produced, including an address, a telephone number or e-mail address. Although this information is typically found on a “contact us” or “about us” page, some sites stick it in the privacy policy (usually at the very bottom) or terms of use, so you may have to do some clicking and scrolling. If all else fails, check the return policy for an address. If you’ve exhausted all these options and still can’t find an address, find another site.

Despite its name, the Pirate Party is no joke. Founded in 2006 with the launch of its website, the Piratpartiet is now Sweden's third-largest in terms of membership (it's especially popular among the young and Web-savvy), and came in fifth place in the European Parliament elections behind the Social Democrats, Greens, Liberals and the Moderate Party.

As we wrote earlier this year, Webloyalty made money from customers who (often unwittingly) paid monthly fees to the consumer discount clubs it operated, including Reservation Rewards, Shoppers Discounts & Rewards, Members Specials, Buyer Assurance, Distinctive Privileges, PC Protection Plus, Travel Values, Travel Values Plus, Classmates Rewards and Wallet Shield.

Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 8:46 PM
Subject: Help - Please
http://www.rbausa.com
Is the above company a legit health care provider?
Mike

While we can't say for sure if Real Benefits Association actually is a legitimate health care provider, we can say that we suggest looking elsewhere for health insurance.

Why? First off, the RBA's site fails the WebWatch smell test, due to the lack of a privacy policy. The site contained a number of other read flags as well, including a "Disclaimer" link takes you to a page with temporary text, an "In the News Link that leads to a blank 'coming soon' page and a "More About Company" link on the homepage that steers you to a dead page.

While we faulted the site for a lack of contact information, hyperlinks that don't link to anything and the fact it appears to be just another Web-based affiliate marketing program, readers took the conversation to a whole new level.

Comments range from scathing (Absolute scam!!!!!!), regretful (I bought it like a fool and it is junk..pure rubbish), defensive (Earth4energy is not a scam product. It's a great product created by Michael Harvey which can help us save our electricity usage to great extent. For more details about this product, visit Earth 4 Energy website), and technical (At $200.00 per panel that is about $67.00 dollars per amp. Most houses today require a 200 amp electrical service. That would require sixty seven panels at a cost of $13,400 plus the $49.95 for the manual.)

Is Earth4Energy.com just another of the thousands of scam sites out there, or a viable, do-it-yourself alternative to affordable energy? Decide for yourself.

The short answer is yes.

First off, Googling "defenza.com" with McAfee Site Adviser yielded results flagged with a red X and a warning to "use with caution." According to the Site Adviser report, "When we visited this site, we found that it may be affiliated with other ''red' sites." The other red site in question is cashengines.com, of which McAfee said: "When we visited this site, we found that it funds and facilitates the creation of numerous identical web sites, which charge fees for products available elsewhere for free."

Unlike Google and other search engines, WolframAlpha doesn't indiscriminately trawl the Web for information whose sources can range from scholarly journals to the rantings of lunatic bloggers. According it’s FAQ page: "It can only know things that are known, and are somehow public. It only deals with facts, not opinions."

Rather, WolframAlpha performs computations from its own internal knowledge base, more than 10 trillion pieces of information sourced from thousands of official websites, libraries and academic journals, and checked by experts.

Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard and the co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, describes it as a “computable almanac.”

Don't take our word for it. Experience WolframAlpha for yourself. If you have trouble wrapping your Googled mind around this non-search engine, visit the examples page for suggestions on how to take advantage of this new information resource.

"The past few months has seen a dramatic rise in the number and complexity of malware programs being used to target Apple users and the situation is only going to get worse, according to security vendors, and part of the problem may be down to Apple users themselves."

Mac users, take note.

"Concerns: Your article on Myfreescroll has some inconsistencies. I am the General Manager of The Historical Research Center. We are not a franchise business. We are a business opportunity business. Not sure where you got the 5,000 pounds as a start up figure. We have a start up package for $995.00. Unlike a franchise, all of this money is for inventory. There are no franchise fees. If you want to evaluate whether or not we are at Ellis Island, try giving the gift shop a call. They will tell you if we are there or not. By the way we have been there for about 10 years. When we filmed our ad there we obtained permission from the National Park Service. By the way, the free search on the Ellis Island web site is terrific. We use some of that information ourselves, however we also go way beyond just the immigration records at Ellis Island. Our researchers look for the meaning, origin and historical references from as far back as 1,000 years ago. Give me a call at (xxx) xxx-xxxx or send me an email if you have any questions."

Click on the link below for our response.

So we weren't surprised at all to come across an article in SC Magazine warning of a "malware avalanche."

According to the article, "Security firm Fortinet's April 2009 Threatscape Report identified more incidents of new and known malware infections than ever before. Fortinet said that certain countries and areas are being specifically targeted, and that China had seen the worst attacks. The report also identified online gaming sites as the most common vehicles for infection."

Read the article and make sure all your security software is activated and up-to-date.

When we located the domain responsible for all the malware to hit our machines, we couldn't help noticing a slew of malicious sites masquerading as official U.S. government domain names, such as "ustreasury.federalbanksystem.net," "ustreasury.federalbanks.us," "usbanks.esecure-federal.us," and so on.

All of them have one thing in common: they contain an especially difficult-to-detect piece of crimeware called LuckySploit, an exploit toolkit that infects unsuspecting visitors to a site via drive-by-download, installing malware that allows cybercriminals to access personal information by keystroke logging.

Sir Paul McCartney's site was recently hacked to infect visitors with LuckySploit. ScanSafe, the security firm that detected and neutralized the program, described LuckySploit as "the most advanced and sophisticated version of crimeware toolkits."