Last Updated on December 6, 2023 by Mathew Diekhake
A community score related to online malware scanners is the score registered users have recorded for a website. Community scores are separate from the grades by security vendors. A security vendor uses software to scan websites, whereas a community score is grading the experience by the users.
The advantage of a community score lies in the fact that sometimes the health of a website changes, and regular users are more likely to encounter malicious software or scams than periodic software scans. Often, a community score can be useful at detecting scams or recording feedback for a site regarding their real-world usage.
The drawback of a community score is that the community is not made up of professionals, and they sometimes get things wrong. For instance, trustworthy sites can sometimes have negative community scores. In these cases, what is likely happening is the community isn’t accurately understanding where their problems derive.