Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Who Do You Trust Least?

Posted by timothy on from the living-down-to-expectations dept.

Mister Furious points to a story on Yahoo! "about how a recent study found AOL to be the least trusted site on the net. It even got lower trust ratings then Microsoft." It would be good to see the actual survey questions and results, since they're referred to only in vague terms. Partly because of that, the story could proabably appear in the Onion without raising many eyebrows -- it seems to tacitly acknowledge that to these companies, perception is more important than reality. If you don't use AOL or MSN, one's current ISP is always a good recipient of distrust.

13 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. Does anybody else ever feel think twice... by Adversive · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...when you see on the "Always trust content from Microsoft Corporation" checkmark?

    --
    Adversive
    My cat's breath smells like cat food.
    1. Re:Does anybody else ever feel think twice... by upstairs · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yeah, and its got one of those 'No' buttons that moves elsewhere whenever you go to click it.

  2. Define trust... by Nevrar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "...consumers said they were highly distrustful..." I appreciate the news article is summarising, but really, I reckon they sorta need to define trust. I mean is it in terms of privacy, is it reliability of service? I.M.H.O. it could be taken to mean any number of different things by those being surveyed. I'm not sure you can seriously look at figures like that to mean anything (of course, it could just be a jounalistic summary of a more in-depth survey).

    --
    Nevrar
  3. Significance? by expunged · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The story mentions first 37 and 29 percent and then 15 and 17 percent, drawing HUGE differences -- Microsoft is referred to as nearly as trusted as online brokerages, while AOL is paraded as completely untrustable.

    Is 2% (or even 8%) really that significant? It may seem huge, but it really depends on the survey size and how the questions are asked. Does anyone know more about how these surveys are done, their margins of error on average, etc?

    I think they are jumping to conclusions on this one, unless they know more than they are telling. It almost seems like they are jumping on a "let's hate AOL" bandwagon. (Not that that's necessarily completely unfounded)

    -nicole

  4. Pr0n? by Dr_Cheeks · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Frankly, I think that our friends the pr0nographers are way more untrustworthy than AOL. At least AOL doesn't pop-up and pop-under new windows at every given opportunity, including when you close the current browser window (man, I hate that). And they don't attempt to plant suspicious (and occasionally incriminating) cookies on your HD, or do any of those other wonderful tricks that help your boss/parents/significant other argue that you're not doing anything productive on the net. And I'd sure feel better about giving my CC# to AOL than to pr0n sites (we're just using it to check your age, no really....)

    AOL are no saints, but they do seem to have developed some scruples as a sort of reponse to potentially bad publicity.

    --

  5. I sure don't trust... by andi75 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I sure don't trust slashdot for the correct spelling (english is not my mother tongue).

  6. Re:The title is wrong by juha0 · · Score: 5, Funny
    Do you trust slashdot ?

    Nope. Every time I see a link that looks interesting, it leads me to site where this guy is bending over with his ass wide open!

  7. What site do I trust least? by rjh · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... anything ending in .gov.

    1. Re:What site do I trust least? by FatOldGoth · · Score: 5, Funny

      I agree! That's why I'll always prefer the content of whitehouse.com over that of whitehouse.gov

      --

      I would be a paid subscriber if Taco and Hemos weren't such cunts
  8. Microsoft most trusted? by phalse+phace · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hmmm... must have been them dead people answering them surveys. How else can you explain it?

  9. CNet news.com could be a contender by Ryu2 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Fluffy articles with little to no technical content, error-prone reporting (especially of anything not MS or Intel), superficial quotes from "analysts", for example: "shutting down Napster will cause problems for their users" or "The slowdown will cause a decline in tech spending among companies" -- they get paid for this???


    Also, most of their articles touting new products, etc are really thinly-veiled adverts for MS, Intel, etc. and never seem to badmouth anything too badly. Their "videos" are also little more than mouthpieces for company spokespeople to get their point across.

    --
    There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
  10. It's not AOL, Microsoft, or anybody big by InsaneGeek · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My biggest fear would be someone who is *not* under public scrutiny like larger companies. Look how many small companies constantly try to fly under the radar and install spyware onto your computer in their latest release. The whole Gator thing is a perfect example of this, they start off initially as a company who helps people autocomplete forms on websites, then they start sending rival adds to pages that you goto, then they intentionally build an app to go over the existing banner add on the page.

    A company like Microsoft would *never* be able to get away with a gator like stunt, someone would be suing the heck out of them (the government would have their antitrust lawyers out like a pack of ravenous wolfs). Only people who seem to get away with doing stuff like this is the small little company that nobody seems to really care about; but that company is the first in line to screw you over in dirty little tricks.

  11. I trust my ISP by TWR · · Score: 3, Interesting
    one's current ISP is always a good recipient of distrust.

    Maybe not trusting your ISP is a side-effect of using one of the large, faceless companies as an ISP. I use sonic.net (www.sonic.net), which is relatively small, has great tech support, provides equipment status (and failure) notices on its home page, and is currently fighting SBC to overturn its new, restrictive DSL contract.

    I pay about $5/month more for my DSL with Sonic than I would with SBC, but I get a static IP address, no limitations on running a server, a shell account, 50MB of web space on their server, and I get a nice warm feeling from supporting a mom-and-pop company.

    If you don't trust your ISP, you've got to wonder why you're giving them money in the first place.

    -jon

    --

    Remember Amalek.