I don't know if you actually liked this or not, but I did. It displayed a deep knowledge of how to manipulate design elements to implant an idea in a user's head.
There's nothing dishonest about it, it's just a design element.
Actually, I found it dishonest. It's the equivalent of small print to me. I'll do a walk through of my initial reaction when I saw those logos.
1) Oh! Those companies have purchased this before to make their sites better! If they stand behind the product then maybe I should look into buying it.
2) Hmm...they didn't purchase it. Maybe the creator of this product was part of the design team for those websites and he knows what he is talking about.
That's an extremely narrow view of "dishonest" if "dishonest" means "made me make an assumption that it itself clears up in English plain text in plain view".
There's nothing dishonest about it, it's just a design element.