Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Yahoo has posted a false “Unsolicited Emails” warning associated with our website, www.rumford.com, when searching for “Rumford fireplaces”. The warning is generated by Yahoo’s partner, McAfee SiteAdvisor. It's literally false because SiteAdvisor says they made that determination by “entering our e-mail address on this site”. They could not have automatically posted a test email address on our website. We have no forms or any other way to automatically enter an email message. I do all the site maintenance manually in html and sweep all the pages onto the Internet myself.

Thinking that SiteAdvisor had somehow made a simple mistake, I tried to contact them by phone and email - to no avail. After a month of trying, I have not gotten to anyone who will listen. Rather, I get transferred from one anonymous customer relations person to another. Same with McAfee and Yahoo says there is nothing they can do - my problem is with McAfee.

So I have complained to the Washington Attorney General and the California and Texas Better Business Bureau and have hired a lawyer - just to try to get someone in authority who will take some responsibility.

I have also spent some time surfing the blogs to see what others think about McAfee and Yahoo. I learned that McAfee falsely targets many websites with their faulty but arrogantly defended technology - and then blames their victims. There is plenty of discussion about the websites McAfee has falsely red tagged on several blogs.

As a result of the Better Business Bureau complaint I have had several email exchanges with Kimberly R. Smith at McAfee, She hasn't dealt with the fact that the McAfee crawler could not have placed a test email address on our website. I know that Ms. Smith does understand the question. On July 11 she wrote in classic non-sequitur doublespeak: "McAfee's position has been expressed clearly to you, I'm sorry that you find this unsatisfactory. I'm unsure how else to say that your site was tested and received a rating based on that result. When the site is retested if no forms are found and your site warrants an adjustment, the rating will be changed."

Ms. Smith went on to say that McAfee "will not provide the criteria or steps involved to you. That could jeopardize the outcome of our tests to your site and other sites as well."

In other words, McAfee will not admit they made a mistake. Even if they do eventually correct their error, their company line is that they will re-test and change our rating if we warrant an adjustment. They have made an error and are covering it up, making it seem to be our fault, in an attempt to avoid legal responsibility.

I would let it go if they had double checked when I first contacted them to see that they had made a mistake and then removed the false warning. Instead McAfee has been unresponsive, arrogant and fundamentally dishonest. It has taken six weeks, and the BBB, to get even this dishonest answer and they have not yet corrected their mistake. The erroneous warning is still associated with our website continuing to drive away our customers.