iCanvas Reviews

bluesnake312

September 28, 2010

“This is a good opportunity to demonstrate how some sites go about faking things. In this case, a fake McAffee badge at top right on the page, which actually looks genuine, but isn't. This is how it's done: Firstly, although the badge is clickable and produces an apparently-genuine McAffee certificate when clicked, it's not a genuine McAffee badge even though it looks like it. The image is on the icanvasart site itself, at http://site.icanvasart.com/mcafee/mcafee.jpg. It's been stolen from McAffee. Below, a genuine McAffee badge displays the word "TESTED" followed by the correct date, and most sites trying to fake one either don't know how to do it, or don't bother. This site has bothered, by printing the word "TESTED" in tiny monospaced style, and then using a bit of Javascript code to produce the authentic date and display it so it looks genuine: Span style="font: 8px/normal\'Arial\', Arial, monospace; color:#000">TESTED Script language="JavaScript" Var now = new Date(); Var months = new Array( 'JAN','FEB','MAR','APR','MAY', 'JUN','JUL','AUG','SEP','OCT', 'NOV','DEC'); Var date = ((now. GetDate()<10)? "0": "")+ now. GetDate(); Function fourdigits(number) { Return (number < 1000)? Number + 1900: number;} Today = date + "-" + Months[now. GetMonth()]; Document. Write(today); Today = months[now. GetMonth()] + " " + Date + ", " + (fourdigits(now. GetYear())); (You don't have to understand that, I'm just showing how it was done. And I've had to edit the code a bit so SiteJabber doesn't have a fit when it sees I'm trying to insert programming code into a forum posting.) The pop-up page it takes you to is also a phony. It's not on the McAffee site at all, you're still at the icanvasart.com site and this page is at http://site.icanvasart.com/mcafee/RatingVerify.html. A genuine badge takes you to the genuine page on the McAffee site when clicked. H All the images and styles have been stolen from the genuine McAffee site. Here's some of the code used to do it: Firstly get the set of style instructions for the page, by stealing it from McAffee: -link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https :// images. Scanalert. Com/css/rating-verify. Css"- Then start using images stolen from McAffee to make the page look genuine: - img src="http://site.icanvasart.com/mcafee/webCertification.gif" - And -img src="http://site.icanvasart.com/mcafee/logo.jpg" Then use a bit of javascript to calculate the correct date: Script language="JavaScript" Var now = new Date(); Var months = new Array( 'Jan','Feb','Mar','Apr','May', 'Jun','Jul','Aug','Sep','Oct', 'Nov','Dec'); Var date = ((now. GetDate()<10)? "0": "")+ now. GetDate(); Function fourdigits(number) { Return (number < 1000)? Number + 1900: number;} Today = date + "-" + Months[now. GetMonth()] + "-" + (fourdigits(now. GetYear())); Document. Write(today); And a bit more to assemble it: Today = months[now. GetMonth()] + " " + Date + ", " + (fourdigits(now. GetYear())); And that's the most important bit. You just need to insert the name of your "certified" website and you're more or less done. Further down the page, though, you have to re-create the links to genuine McAffee pages just in case anyone clicks them, but that's easy enough, and since your phony page actually links to the real McAffee site, it looks even more authentic. The lesson here is not to take what you see at face value. There's no way that I know of to fake a certification from McAffee or any other genuine service, which can't be proved to be a fake. But the majority of people don't even bother to check. Many sites don't even try to be as clever as this one, and just leave the badge unclickable and don't bother to put the date in at all. And they still fool people into believing they're at a so-called "hacker-proof" site. Also be on the watch for other kinds of deception, which may be harder to prove but aren't all that uncommon. For example, at least two of the images in the "about us" page on this site, which are clearly there to suggest this company owns this equipment and employs these people, have nothing to do with this company at all. One of them was taken from a trade show in Germany in 2007. And I've seen images taken at random from Google to create false impressions, on other sites in the past. You'd probably think me way too harsh if I said, trust no-one in your online transactions. But people like you and I lose hundreds of thousands of dollars to unreliable online traders every year. A little caution could make a big dent in that figure. I am not suggesting, however, that this particular site is unreliable or that you might lose money here. I've no reason to suspect it, whatsoever, and as far as I know the site doesn't have a bad reputation. But to the owners, I'd observe that people have many, many options when they buy online and you're doing yourselves a disservice by resorting to deceit when it's not needed. It makes you look dubious, and people have plenty of other places they can and will go to instead if they suspect you. It's the same when a company posts a number of phony, self-promoting reviews on a site like this one, or offers customers benefits if they do so; people aren't stupid, and if they catch on, they'll just go somewhere else. You might just as well be honest and earn a reputation, instead of trying to fake one.”