By Dennis O’Reilly Our two most-recent Top Stories — on CNN.com’s use of the Octoshape peer-to-peer service and on the reliability of McAfee’s SiteAdvisor security service — generated quite a response among the media as well as from readers. As you’ve seen in this week’s Top Story, McAfee is reacting to our report by clarifying the process used to generate and update SiteAdvisor ratings.

Whenever an article receives the kind of positive response from readers that the last two Windows Secrets Top Stories garnered, we’re on cloud nine. And if the stories get picked up by other news sources — as our coverage of CNN.com’s use of the Octoshape peer-to-peer streaming technology and of McAfee’s SiteAdvisor policies has — it’s gravy.



Here’s a smattering of the news sources reporting on editorial director Brian Livingston’s Feb. 5 Top Story on CNN.com’s use of Octoshape:

• Broadband DSL Reports.com: Debate Springs Up Over CNN P2P Use
• Huffington Post: Watch CNN.com Live Video, Share Your Computer With CNN
• Mediabistro: What You Probably Didn’t Know If You Watched the Inauguration on CNN.com Live
• Inside Cable News: CNN.com’s Video Trojan Horse

The following are some of the media reports following Mark Joseph Edwards’ Feb. 12 Top Story on McAfee’s SiteAdvisor security service:

• Safe Computing Bulletin: McAfee SiteAdvisor Ratings May Not Be a Good Guide to Website Safety
• Freedomlist: SiteAdvisor Plug-in for Browsers May Be Out of Date

Two more free alternatives to SiteAdvisor

Mark’s SiteAdvisor story recommended the Web of Trust browser plug-in (more info) as an option for people who want an indication of the safety of the sites they visit. Reader George Elting points out two similar free services:

• “I quit using SiteAdvisor a short while after McAfee took over. I now use two free programs to do similar things. One is CallingID [more info], which tells me how honest a site is about its ownership. The other is LinkScanner Lite [more info], which scans links in Web searches and e-mail. Between the two, I feel secure.”
  

Special paid columns warned of glitches

Following last week’s publication, we e-mailed on Feb. 14 to paid subscribers two premium columns that we deemed too important to postpone until today. Susan Bradley’s special Patch Watch column describes how to avoid a serious glitch related to the update described in Microsoft security advisory KB 960715. In the PC Tune-Up column, Mark reports on holes discovered in two popular remote-access programs, UltraVNC and TightVNC.

If you’re a free subscriber and you’d like to read these two stories (and all our paid content), you can do so by visiting the upgrade page and contributing whatever amount you feel it’s worth. You’ll then receive 12 months of our paid content and access to the full Windows Secrets archive.

George will receive a gift certificate for a book, CD, or DVD of his choice for sending tips we printed. Send us your tips via the Windows Secrets contact page.

The Known Issues column brings you readers’ comments on our recent articles. Dennis O’Reilly is technical editor of WindowsSecrets.com.

Related posts:

1. CNN.com’s use of Octoshape puts readers on edge
2. Did you miss the best stories of 2008?
3. Free “SiteAdvisor”
4. SiteAdvisor ratings may be 1 year out-of-date
5. Email Horror Stories— And Solutions