Well in that case, it's better than it used to be: http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/free-wordpress-themes-ultimate-guide/ http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/free-w

Well in that case, it's better than it used to be: http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/free-wordpress-themes-ultimate-guide/ http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/free-wordpress-themes-ultima... The part about searching for themes in Google says that you get better results now than you used to. As for what stops third party sites doing this? Well for paid ones, reputation. You allow through themes with lots of security issues and backdoors, and customers start getting hacked and well... people might start steering clear of you in future. So the marketplaces and theme shops have an incentive not to act like scumbags. For free sites? Guess reputation there too. You're right that we could see this happen in some cases, but not doing the proper review process is a losing proposition for the site as well as the users.