The online world is a strange, wonderful and unsafe place. In this week alone, I’ve received two emails detailing abuse of the PC Pro Recommended logo on websites: one by a company called innoIT, the other for a product titled WebWatcher (I won’t give them the dignity of a web link, for obvious reasons).

The implication, of course, is that we’ve recommended their products. In one case, that we awarded them the title of Software of the Year 2007. And an innocent browser may be fooled – both sites look professional, with good design and a truckload of commendations.

Except, of course, that they’re commendations about an entirely different company. In the case of innoIT, the page of “genuine” quotes from customers actually bears a stunning similarity to those on the wholly reputable site from PC Specialist – which has actually earned any awards it displays.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Colleagues from our sister site IT Pro were shocked to see a site with a not too dissimilar URL that had pretty much lifted the site wholesale, not even bothering to change the name of the staff who were writing the stories.

In fact, the only thing that had changed was the contact for advertising…

Naturally, the powers-that-be at Dennis Technology served that site with a cease-and-desist notice, but with it being owned by a foreign company and served on a foreign host, this is rarely going to get immediate results.

So what’s the conclusion? The obvious one is browse with cynicism, but there are tools out there that can help. McAfee SiteAdvisor may have its faults, on one occasion giving PC Pro a red rating the little terrors, but it rarely gives false positives.

I’d be interested to hear if anyone else in other industries has suffered similar problems. Identity theft on a corporate scale could be the next big thing…