Hacker Safe by Scan Alert- Is it worth it?

[nefitco]

I would like to get some feedback on whether sites that have integrated the Hacker Safe from Scan Alert. Do you feel it has increased the trustworthiness of your site and increased conversions?

[wingslevel]

are you still inside of your 30 days? what is their reason?

tell them you are going to chargeback - keep records of all of your communications with them - your cc company will charge them back...

[CernyM]

We're inside the 30 days.

It basically boils down to a business dispute. I think that their position is laughable, but this probably isn't the place to go into details.

I am surprised that they resist issuing a refund in our case. There's no incentive on the part of their customers to ask for refunds if the service is doing what Scan Alert claims that it does.

We've disputed the charge with our credit card company and will let them sort it out.

[aaronjf]

Come on come on.. tell us why they said they would not refund you.

Wow, glad I did not sign up with those guys.

[my74]

Since I have to do the PCI Compliance I'm a customer of scan alert. I did not sign up for the Hacker Safe.
The Hacker Safe logo is on our shopping cart......sales are the same as always ;-)

I have a question......who/what do you use for PCI Compliance?

[biking4jesus]

the sales rep has continued to call on us, even we we take the message to call him/her back... we have seriously given thought to try the HS program for a trial period and monitor our sales, until he gave us his last ditch effort on why we should seal-a-the-deal-a. He said "look it would be better for me if we closed the deal today because its my commission we're talking about here." WHAT WAS HE THINKING!?! When we said no, he didnt call for a week. When he called back to try and get us signed up (for the 10th time) he said sorry he didnt get back to us because he was on vacation! Unless you get me a different sales person and less than $1500 a year we'll just keep tossing their messages.

[sandyeggo]

One time I ran a demo of scanalert for 3 months. The results said that there was no difference, it was a 50-50 split exactly. So i was going to cancel. Then, the owner himself called me and told me that there was an error in the stats, and that actually the logo did help me, and to prove it he would offer me an extention to the guarantee, and run the demo again for 3 more months. After 3 months the stats were the same - 50-50. So i cancelled and I giot all of my money back.

But fyi, if you want to tighten up your own server, you can just run the Nessus program yourself. Thats what the scanalert people do. It is free, open source code that will do the same thing, similar reports and suggestions.

Just get nessus and forget about the hackerlogo (personally, i want to hack the site just to see what I can do - but i WON'T ;-) ). I am sure there is something better you can work on to increase your conversions.

[my74]

"" fyi, if you want to tighten up your own server, you can just run the Nessus program yourself""

Thanks for the info......I didn't about Nessus.

[luckychucky]

Surely there must be a good Nessus logo to use? "Site security tested by Nessus" or whatever.

[otc_cmnn]

Pay me $50 a month and I will make a logo for you to put on your site. AND I 100% money back guarantee that it will be prettier than that NASTY Hacker Safe Logo!

[Peter Cornstalk]

If you display the ScanAlert hacker safe logo, you are virtually lying to your customer because if they do find a security problem, the logo still runs indicating your site is ok for 72 hrs. until you fix the problem, then after 72 hours it won't display anymore.

How it that telling a customer your server is secure if at any moment they are visiting the site a vulnerability could exsist and be known, yet the logo says you are OK?

[iblaine]

ScanAlert or an equivilant is required for security code/CSC verification on American Express cards. I'm not convinced that ScanAlert has improved my conversions. At least the cost is marginal relative to sales so I continue to ignore it. The whole hacker-proofing industry seems like selling snake oil to me.

[aaronjf]

Really, using verisign PFP API, I have no problem with AMEX ans CSC

[badass101]

Well, all I can say is that if I was a hacker and I fancied having a pop at an ecommerce site, the HackerSafe logo would be like a red rag to a bull to me...

Still, I'm not a hacker!

[chrisxoxide]

I had a terrible experience with this company. They called several of my companies and bothered my CSRs and eventually I ended up having a few conversations with them. My curiousity got to me, and they had me convinced enough on their sales hook to give it that "risk free trial". Ended up turning into a big waste of time for me because they did not give me my refund, they avoided my calls, did not return any of my emails requesting cancellation. This was all about 10-15 days into that 30 day trial, I'm not sure what they really planned on doing.

Anyway, I had to refute the charge, and ended up getting my refund. Any business that dodges like that has a scam product though in my book.

They tried to hook me onto an A/B test about 10 days in, but they only wanted to do the test on 200 orders. I requested the test be done on 3000 orders (roughly 10-15 days of testing for the store I had this placed on) and they disagreed. They said that 200 orders would be plenty to see results.

200 orders is such a slim amount that the coin can flip either way.

Bottomline this business is just a scam. I hope I cost them some business.

I also was frustrated reading that Internet Retailer article, but as said, Internet Retailer is a for profit business after all, and ScanAlert had a full page , might have been cover 3 slot if I remember correctly. As far as Petco or Petsmart or whoever it was in the article, I think its embarressing for any representative of their company to give the 13% sales growth credit to SCANALERT. Its as if they are really trying to make people assume that nothing else promotionally was done with their business or website.

[Peter Cornstalk]

The only thing they really provide of value is MasterCard Site Data Protection (SDP) compliant vendor scans to meet PCI requirements, but for this they are ridiculously overpriced.

There are many other companies that are approved by MasterCard that have reasonable prices... like AlertSite.

[Rugles]

>>>$1500 a year

What! I never let them get that far into the sales pitch to hear the price.

Now that this thread has run its course, I cant wait for the next call.