Methodology
Status: stub. Full version publishes the day v1 ships.
Why this page is a stub
Countermark is in the pre-build validation phase. The extension does not exist yet, and any specific claim about how it scores hosts would be a guess about a tool that has not been written. Publishing a detailed methodology now would mean publishing fiction.
This page exists so the link in the footer does not go to a 404, and so the commitment to publish the full methodology is on the record.
What the full methodology will cover, when it publishes
- The exact signals Countermark surfaces in v1: cancellation forensics (review-text patterns indicating host cancellations, cross-listing review-gap analysis), listing-relisting detection (perceptual photo hashing, approximate lat/long matching, archived listing-title and host-name comparison), and review-velocity anomalies (burst-cluster detection, reviewer profile shallowness checks).
- How each signal maps to the colored stripe (green / yellow / red / gray).
- What “insufficient signal” means and why gray is deliberately not a green light.
- The honest false-positive rate, once enough post-launch data exists to measure it. The first publication target is 12–18 months after v1 ships. Until then, the calibration is openly biased toward warning the traveler — we err on the side of yellow, not green.
- Annual updates on calibration drift, signal additions, and signal retirements.
- The host dispute process: how a host whose score they believe is wrong can contact Countermark, what we will and will not do in response, and how disputes feed back into signal calibration.
What this page will never claim
- That Countermark is right about any specific host.
- That a green stripe means a host will not cancel on you.
- That Countermark is a substitute for travel insurance.
- That the false-positive rate is precisely some number, before there is enough data to measure it honestly.
What you can do today
If you want to read the underlying thinking before the methodology exists, the public planning documents for Countermark — including the PRFAQ, the validation-gate protocols, and the pre-committed go/no-go criteria — will be made available alongside v1.