14 DAY TRIAL // SiteLock, a web security firm, has sent two DMCA notices to rival White Fir Design and asked the latter to remove two images of the SiteLock homepage from two articles that criticized its web security services.
The article where the first image was used is named "SiteLock Labels Website as Secure Despite Being Very Dangerous For Visitors" and contains harsh criticism of SiteLock after the company displayed a "SiteLock Secure" badge on a malicious website.
White Fir Design staff discovered that the website where the badge was displayed, a Magento e-commerce store, contained malicious code to scrape and steal data from the checkout forms.
One image was used to make fun of SiteLock
White Fir's team had included a screenshot of SiteLock's homepage, in an attempt to mock their rival for claiming to be "The Global Leader in Website Security."
The reason for White Fir to mock and criticize its rival was because its security experts found the malicious code in the website's source code right under the code that displayed the SiteLock Secure badge.
"What makes it stick out even more is that the code wasn’t hidden, it was sitting at the bottom of the page right below the code for SiteLock seal," the White Fir team explained.
The second image was used to highlight some errors
The second image SiteLock wanted White Fir to remove from its website is a screenshot of a table found on SiteLock's website, included in an article named "SiteLock Spreading False Information About WordPress’ Security To Their Customers Through Their Platform Scan for WordPress."
The table showed SiteLock advising clients about vulnerabilities in a WordPress version. According to White Fir, that particular WordPress version did not contain those security vulnerabilities. To illustrate their findings, White Fir included a screenshot of the SiteLock table, most likely as a historic reference and as evidence to support their criticism.
"What makes this even more ridiculous is they clearly now know that their post is showing that they lack a basic understanding of WordPress security, but instead of fixing their post, they are trying to hide you from seeing an image on our website," White Fir wrote on their site.
Is SiteLock the latest victim of the Streisand effect?
As for the other side of the coin, White Fir is known for this type of articles. If the company's name sounds familiar, then you've probably read their Plugin Vulnerabilities blog, which often contains harsh criticism of the entire WordPress security ecosystem.
The company has not minced words when it comes to fellow WordPress security firm WordFence, and neither for the WordPress Plugins Directory team, often criticizing it for failing to remove malicious plugins in due time, or for restoring plugins that hadn't been properly cleaned of infections.
Softpedia has reached out to SiteLock for additional comments on its decision to file the two DMCA notices. Your reporter's opinion and the opinion of a reporter from TorrentFreak is that these images fall under the category of fair use for reporting purposes.
As Dissent, a reporter for DataBreaches.net, pointed out on Twitter, SiteLock seems to have fallen for the Streisand effect, described on Wikipedia as a "phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet."
UPDATE: A SiteLock spokesperson has provided Softpedia with the following statement regarding the White Fir DMCA notice.
“ SiteLock recognizes and encourages differing opinions. The DMCA filing in question did not go through our proper channels and is being addressed internally. We regret any confusion this has caused. ”