Michael Roebuck's Blog

It's been a while since my last post. The summer has been slow with major events but I'm currently watching a new event slowly unfold.

Back in July, 2007 I posted about HackerSafe and compared them to ControlScan. (Should you use Hackersafe? ControlScan?) HackerSafe has now merged with McAfee and has been re branded as "McAfee Secure." I won't go into the price increase of using McAfee Secure but will touch on some changes that I and others are seeing.

Last month I was talking with my good friend Cresta Pillsbury who used to work for Hackersafe. She was made redundant and now works for the E-Commerce Merchants Trade Association. We were discussing the HackerSafe merge as well as the benefits of ControlScan. She has recently posted her own blog post about HackerSafe here: What is McAfee Thinking??

Basically, she exposes McAfee's attempt to steal traffic away from there own merchants. I was dumbfounded when I originally read her post because I was completely oblivious to this trick and I usually look for this type of stunt.

Cresta writes, "Anyone who is currently using the McAfee seal on their site is actually paying McAfee to take their traffic and send it to their competitors. What?!! I know but check out this link. www.gothamcityonline.com, now click on the McAfee seal https://www.mcafeesecure.com/RatingVerify?ref=www.gothamcityonline.com , once you do this their are two different links that will take you to McAfee's secure shopping portal which lists your competitors products. one is the "Attention Shoppers" the other is your company name directly under your URL... So tell me this, how is McAfee helping to increase your conversion if you are spending money for good traffic and they are directing it elsewhere? How is that good business practices?"

I don't need to write any more on this. After you have paid top dollar for Pay Per Click, Email Marketing, SEO, or whatever you do in order to get a customer to your site, McAfee comes along under the guise of "Secure Shopping" and offers them an option to buy from someone else. And you pay McAfee for this service?

Needless to say, I've brought this to the attention of some of my clients and suggest if you use HackerSafe / McAfee Secure, please look into this.

Now, for my rant on third party security......

I'm not too sure I think paying for a third party secure shopping logo is a good idea. I specialize in the design of Yahoo Stores and Yahoo Stores are already secure. I make my own "Secure Shopping" icon and link it directly to Yahoos' Secure Shopping page.

As my previous post on the comparison of HackerSafe and ControlScan stated, we were really testing brand recognition to see if the third party security banner increased conversions or not.

I feel in todays marketplace, PCI compliance mandates security. In order to accept credit cards on your web site you must be PCI compliant. I've filled out several exceptionally long questionnaires sent to me by clients whose banks required this information as well as required the site be scanned by someone other than HackerSafe or ControlScan. (One of the other companies, www.securitymetrics.com has there own "secure" logo as well.) Therefore, I think it's the bank who dictates who ultimately needs to scan the web site. Also, if the web site wasn't secure, they wouldn't be able to accept credit cards.

In closing, while it's a hot topic right now, maybe this will eventually die away as the online credit card industry evolves. Whoever gets to the banks first will win and everyone else will try to hang on and tout increased conversions due to "Brand Loyalty." Wasn't the reason these companies started up in the first place to increase customer perception that the site they are giving financial data to was secure? I admit I'm a fan of the brand McAfee Virus Protection whereas others in my office prefer Norton and some even use AVG. But when I think of McAfee or Norton, I do not think web site security. Nor will I condone McAfee Secure as long as they continue to try to steal my customers by linking to a private shopping portal.

Labels: controlscan, cresta, hackersafe, mcafee, pillsbury, secure, security, yahoo