Posts tagged misleading
The Misleading Sinister Surge in Traffic Before Google Panda & Penguin Struck
Feb 13th
Some sites hit by Panda or Penguin experienced a surge in traffic before being hammered. The secret lies in understanding the SEO tactics being executed, how those tactics were impacting traffic levels, and how those tactics could damage a website.
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9 Most Misleading PPC Metrics
Feb 6th
While impression share, time on site, average CPC, average position, conversion rate, CTR, first page bids, and quality scores are all important metrics, when looked at individually, they can actually cause you to make misinformed decisions.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Irish Politician Calls Apple’s New Maps “Dangerously Misleading” After Farm Is Labeled An Airport
Sep 20th
The new iOS 6 Maps is out and users are starting to get their feet wet with the app. The reviews are not all that stellar. In fact, Ireland’s Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter, said Apple’s new maps app in iOS 6 is “dangerously misleading.” iOS 6 labels Airfield Garden as an…
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Home Depot To Correct Misleading Link Request
Apr 19th
It read like one of those bad link requests you get. Link to me, and you’ll rank better. It even suggested hiding the link. But the request was from Home Depot, to its network of nearly 2,000 service providers. Now that it’s come to light, the home improvement store chain says it is…
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Google Engages in Misleading, Deceptive Conduct with AdWords: Australian Court
Apr 3rd
Google engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct in four cases, ruled a Federal Court in Sydney, Australia. The case was an appeal of an earlier decision the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission originally lost over 11 Google ads.
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Australian Court Finds Google Responsible For Misleading Ads Placed By Its Advertisers
Apr 3rd
A Federal Appeals Court in Australia has found Google responsible for misleading ads that displayed when users searched for certain terms and received ads from competitors who had bid on those terms. The ruling, though it only applies in Australia, is important because one of Google’s most…
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Complaint Filed with FTC Accuses Dropbox of Misleading Customers on File Security
May 16th
A complaint filed with the FTC last week charges that the popular cloud-based storage system Dropbox misled its users about the security and privacy afforded by its services. Although security and privacy have been some of Dropbox’s selling points, the complaint alleges that the company deceived users into thinking their files were completely encrypted and that Dropbox employees could not see the contents of the file.
At issue, in part, were Dropbox’s Terms of Service that stated that “all files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES-256) and are inaccessible without your account password.” Dropbox recently revised these terms to read simply “All files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES 256).
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Who Holds the Encryption Key?
The problems with Dropbox’s security claims first came to light last month when PhD student Christopher Soghoian published information revealing that Dropbox employees could indeed see the contents of users’ files. That’s because, in part, Dropbox makes sure that files uploaded to the storage site are de-duplicated. In other words, when a user stores a file on Dropbox, the system checks to see if that user or others have already uploaded that file. If that’s the case, then Dropbox simply links to the original file.
As Soghoian points out, other storage sites like Spideroak and Tarsnap do encrypt users’ data with a key known only to that person, rather than to one key known just to Dropbox. The trade-off for better privacy and security here is duplicate files – in other words, taking up more storage space. But Dropbox has presented itself as offering customers security and cheap storage, something that the complaint says was actually misleading and confusing to customers.
Soghoian a PhD Candidate at the School of Informatives and Computing at Indiana University filed the complaint with the FTC last week, claiming that Dropbox has misled users and that clarifications made by Dropbox are insufficient. As he noted in his blog post that preceeded the claim, “While the decision to deduplicate data has probably saved the company quite a bit of storage space and bandwidth, it has significant flaws which are particularly troubling given the statements made by the company on its security and privacy page.”
Will Dropbox Customers Care?
For its part, Dropbox spokesperson, Julie Supan says that “We believe this complaint is without merit, and raises issues that were addressed in our blog post on April 21.”
Although the issue still has to play out before the FTC, there’s the chance that it will also have repercussions among Dropbox customers. But as Soghoian noted in his own blog posts, “it would be easy for anyone but a crypto expert to get the false impression that Dropbox does in fact protect the security and privacy of users’ data.” Whether or not Dropbox customers will care that the encryption isn’t quite what was advertised remains to be seen.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Microsoft Accuses Google of Misleading Security Certification
Apr 11th
Microsoft is accusing Google of providing misleading information about whether or not its Google Apps for Government is certified under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA).
The roots of the accusation, laid out today in a blog post by Microsoft Corporate Vice President & Deputy General Counsel David Howard, date back to last fall, when the Department of Interior awarded Microsoft with the contract to upgrade its email system and move it to the cloud. Google filed a lawsuit requesting an injunction and claiming that the selection process was unfair.
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Following the success of its Apps for Business and Apps for Education offerings, Google has tried to make in-roads into government cloud contracts as well, which do require some additional security measures. And that’s what today’s brush-up involves.
Google has claimed that its Apps for Government does met the minimum security requirements for government IT, but according to a Department of Justice brief unsealed last week, “notwithstanding Google’s representations to the public at large, its counsel, the GAO and this Court, it appears that Google’s Google Apps for Government does not have FISMA certification.”
Google says that Google Apps for Government has received this certification, and had made a point in its lawsuit that it deserved consideration for the federal contract because Microsoft’s rival offering, Business Productivity Online Suite, did not have FISMA certification.
Google does have FISMA certification for Google Apps Premiere, but not for the Apps for Government, although that claim does appear on its website.
As Howard points out, “Google can’t be under the misimpression that FISMA certification for Google Apps Premier also covers Google Apps for Government. If that were the case, then why did Google, according to the attachments in the DOJ brief, decide to file a separate FISMA application for Google Apps for Government?”
Of course, Microsoft has its own motivations for painting Google’s lack of FISMA certification in this light. As Howard notes, the Department of Interior isn’t moving forward with the installation of Microsoft’s cloud offerings, and other government contracts are probably facing extra scrutiny as well.
We have reached out to Google for comment, and we’ll update this story when we hear more.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Yahoo’s Shashi Seth Calls comScore Data Misleading, Blames Google Instant
Oct 13th
In a blog post yesterday, Shashi Seth, Sr. VP, Yahoo Search & Marketplaces called the latest comScore results, which showed Google’s search market share increase and Yahoo’s dip, misleading. He said the increase was likely due to people who…well, type too slowly using Google Instant.
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Caution: Reported Trends In Search Query Length May Be Misleading
May 21st
We constantly are hearing reports about how web surfers are getting increasingly savvy with their searches. For example, Hitwise reports that average query length is getting longer. Search marketers have interpreted this information in the following way:
If queries are getting longer, the long tail of search must be increasing; further, if web users are [...]
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