almost for free (tip?)

[Lou Jost]

I was refunded by Paypal today. I hadn't really expected them to do it, the automated logout period of their website made it even impossible to complete the damage form, but despite that, without discussion they decided in my favour without any questions.

Excellent, that is what I thought.

[enricosavazzi]

I guess this says enough:

https://www.scam-detector.com/validator ... op-review/

[Tim Boomer]

I guess this says enough:

https://www.scam-detector.com/validator ... op-review/

While scam detector seems to be correct in this case, I would take their ratings with mountains of salt. They rank my website even lower (17.2/100). Mine is a simple website for sure, but absolutely not scammy. Ironically, the sheer number of ads all over their very own site immediately set of scam alarms for me.

[enricosavazzi]

I guess this says enough:

https://www.scam-detector.com/validator ... op-review/

While scam detector seems to be correct in this case, I would take their ratings with mountains of salt. They rank my website even lower (17.2/100). Mine is a simple website for sure, but absolutely not scammy. Ironically, the sheer number of ads all over their very own site immediately set of scam alarms for me.

That is something I noticed too. There is a difference between ads and fraudulent commercial offerings, but an excessive amount of ads like this is, at a minimum, distracting for most visitors. However, the site does offer potentially useful and free advice, and then it is up to each visitor to use their own best judgement.

Perhaps you could try to analyze what triggered their scam alert in their analysis of your website, and if what you find out does make sense and can be corrected without radically changing the nature of your website, make reasonable changes to your site. One should not indiscriminately accept all suggestions and advice, but even free advice like this may be worth considering. In a way, it is comparable to SEO. Attracting more traffic to your website just for the sake of traffic may be questionable, but if proper SEO drives a larger number of interested visitors to your site, it is almost always a good thing.

There is also a saying in Sweden about the difference between important correspondence and spam in your mailbox: If the contents and layout look dry and boring, you should read carefully, because it is likely to be important. If it is flashy and colorful, it is likely to be spam. The original saying was about physical mail, but can also be applied to e-mail and websites.

[Lou Jost]

I think particularly anti-malware sites are often vectors for malware

[Tim Boomer]

That is something I noticed too. There is a difference between ads and fraudulent commercial offerings, but an excessive amount of ads like this is, at a minimum, distracting for most visitors. However, the site does offer potentially useful and free advice, and then it is up to each visitor to use their own best judgement.

Perhaps you could try to analyze what triggered their scam alert in their analysis of your website, and if what you find out does make sense and can be corrected without radically changing the nature of your website, make reasonable changes to your site. One should not indiscriminately accept all suggestions and advice, but even free advice like this may be worth considering. In a way, it is comparable to SEO. Attracting more traffic to your website just for the sake of traffic may be questionable, but if proper SEO drives a larger number of interested visitors to your site, it is almost always a good thing.

There is also a saying in Sweden about the difference between important correspondence and spam in your mailbox: If the contents and layout look dry and boring, you should read carefully, because it is likely to be important. If it is flashy and colorful, it is likely to be spam. The original saying was about physical mail, but can also be applied to e-mail and websites.

Thank you, all good points! I was thinking of reaching out to them to see if I can persuade them to improve my score. I wouldn't say that I have a popular site, but Google, Bing, and Yahoo all tend to rank my pages and especially my images near the top when appropriate species names are queried, so the low score came as quite a surprise.

[Tim Boomer]

I think particularly anti-malware sites are often vectors for malware

Agreed!