Warning, your webite could be being flagged as malware by Trend Micro

[Mark Slade]

Jeez dude….you really are very emotional. Like I told you in the other thread just ask them to check it and they will fix it….matter of fact they did already. Like I told you, there could be an infinite number of reasons why this happened but going berserk sure won’t help things….I hope you don’t act like this towards your customers!!

Mark

[Sebastian Alvarez]

[Mark Slade] “Jeez dude….you really are very emotional.”

Well, I guess you don’t know how it feels to try to start a business and finding out that thanks to a negligent and irresponsible company, several people that could have hired you, for almost three months were told that your company was involved in online scams and frauds, when you were not involved in anything like that. So you lost several customers, not only for jobs in that period, but forever, because nobody that sees that type of warning will ever come back to your website. I would like to see that happen to you and then you can tell me who’s emotional about it.

[Mark Slade] “I hope you don’t act like this towards your customers!!”

I don’t see the point of your statement. Why would I act like that towards my customers? Because I’m upset about a company that has been badmouthing my business without even being a customer, do you assume that I would treat my customers like that? My customers are perfectly happy with my service, thank you very much.

[Mark Slade]

Actually I do know. What I told you about being on a system that has previously been flagged as a source of spam and malicious activity happened to me. I didn’t bad mouth the company that hosted me, but worked with them to correct the problem. No knee jerk reaction….no ranting all over the internet about how bad they were or how much they sucked.
The point of my statement is like others said elsewhere….your instant knee jerk reaction was to slam and badmouth the company instead of calmly working towards a solution. I can just imagine what will happen when you run into a problem with a client in the middle of a project.
Anyways….I’m glad you got the problem worked out quickly and good luck to ya!!

Mark

[Sebastian Alvarez]

[Mark Slade] “Actually I do know. What I told you about being on a system that has previously been flagged as a source of spam and malicious activity happened to me. I didn’t bad mouth the company that hosted me, but worked with them to correct the problem. No knee jerk reaction….no ranting all over the internet about how bad they were or how much they sucked.”

You’re talking about different things there. I would have to know the specifics, but it doesn’t seem like this case, where gross negligence was involved. If I had a website that was a lot more complicated, with tons of code, and even worse, a site where people can upload stuff to, then I would be willing to think maybe there is something wrong with my website. But Trend Micro was the only antivirus showing my site as malware. I went to virustotal.com and of about ten antivirus engines, TM was the only one that showed my site as malware. And, since they changed it to clean less than a day after my complaint, it’s obvious that their algorithms are written by grossly incompetent people, because if my website would really have had any amount of malware code in it, they wouldn’t have changed it. They would have told me, your website actually has malware code in it, you need to change it before we can flag it as clean.

You have to understand one thing. This is not that people had to copy and paste my URL on their website. People that had this software installed had a big warning showing up in their browser saying that my site had been confirmed to be implicated in online scams or frauds. Now, despite the poor quality of the software itself, this company is grossly irresponsible in telling people that another company is involved in online scams or frauds without actually confirming it. It would be a bit different if their warning was not so aggressive, and maybe say “Warning, this site may contain malware”, unless they actually scan the website and determine that it actually contains malware, or receive a few dozen reports that the business has been involved in scams.

So let’s suppose that a few tens of thousands of people in my area use this antivirus. It’s not far fetched to think that maybe 50 of them are looking for a wedding or events videographer and came to my website either through Craigslist, or the other wedding vendor websites. And lets suppose 5 to 10 of those people would have seen my samples, like them and hired me. But those people had Trend Micro installed, so they never saw my samples, they never hired me, and I lost between $5000 to $10000. You see my problem? Maybe I didn’t even lose that much, but even if they made me lose one customer, that’s reason enough for me to be angry at their negligence.

Just imagine this. I go online and I start posting everywhere “Mark Slade (or your company) has been confirmed to be involved in scams and fraud”. Well, you would hate me, and you would be really really angry towards me, with very good reason.

I’ll give you one thing though, I did act impulsively, which is the opposite of what I usually do, especially in posting about this with my own name and company name, and that was stupid of me.

However, my rants about this company have no relation at all in the way I handle my customers, which like I said before, are all happy with my services and my behavior.

[Gary Westergren]

Sebastian,

Just want to say that I completely agree with your reaction. There is a way to treat customers and vendors. But when a company that you have no relationship with damages your business (whether on purpose or via negligence), you should react strongly.

Trend Micro (who has deemed some of my pages as “dangerous” and “virus vectors”), leaves you with no way to effectively contact them. I got the idea that if I was a business or enterprise customer, I could take care of this quickly (is this subtle extortion?).

When Trend Micro is taking money out of your pocket and food off your table, almost anything short of being militant is acceptable.

Cheers,
-Gary.