Would you wander through a neighborhood which has a reputation for being jam-packed with predators without appropriate protection? Well, if you lack the required resources to protect yourself on the Internet, you may be doing just that. The Internet neighborhood, after all, is alive with predators intent on stealing your personal information, installing damaging programs on your computer, and misleading you with an online scam.
It was reported recently that fifteen thousand web pages were infected daily between January and March of this year; three times the rate of infection noted in the previous year. More disturbing, seventy nine percent of compromised web pages tracked this year were on legitimate web sites; including web sites belonging to Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and ironically, security vendors.
WOT (Web of Trust), a free Internet Browser resource that has established an impressive 4.5/5.0 star user rating on CNET, tests web sites you are visiting for spyware, spam, viruses, browser exploits, unreliable online shops, phishing, and online scams. WOT which integrates with search engine results from popular search engines including Google, Yahoo, MSN and other popular sites, provides impressive protection against Internet predators and helps you avoid unsafe web sites.
The Browser add-on’s icon, displays a color rating for each site you visit, indicating whether a site is safe to use, should be used with caution, or avoided entirely. Using traffic light colors, (green, yellow, and red), WOT leaves you in no doubt as to the safety rating of a web site.
An impressive feature of WOT is the dropdown transparent warning curtain, triggered on visiting a dangerous site.
WOT takes conventional security one step further, by soliciting the opinions of users/members whose views on web site safety are incorporated into the overall site safety rating. The advantages of members participation in exchanging their personal knowledge about a web site, in my view, cannot be overemphasized. It allows for a new and exciting trend in Internet security, and that is the concept of “people driven security”. A concept that encompasses the philosophy, that we are all responsible for each others security on the Internet. According to WOT, the user community now has reputation data on over 18 million sites worldwide.
The shared information on a site’s reputation includes trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy, and critical in the current Internet environment, child safety. As well, to bolster the effectiveness of the protection, WOT uses hundreds of trusted sources including phishing site listings, to keep users protected against rapidly spreading threats.
WOT is designed to work with Internet Explorer and FireFox; the user interface supports English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish and Finnish.
Surf more securely by installing this browser add-on which will provide you with an in-depth site analysis based on real world results. Keep in mind however, that you are your own best protection. Stop · Think · Click
WOT is available for download at: MyWot


21 responses so far ↓
WOT (Web of Trust) - Participate in Your Own Internet Security // May 6, 2008 at 12:59 pm |
[...] External News wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt Would you wander through a neighborhood which has a reputation for being jam-packed with predators without appropriate protection? Well, if you lack the required resources to protect yourself on the Internet, you may be doing just that. The Internet neighborhood, after all, is alive with predators intent on stealing your personal information, installing damaging programs on your computer, and misleading you with an online scam. It was reported recently that fifteen thousand web pages were infected daily between January and March of this year; three times the rate of infection noted in the previous year. More disturbing, seventy nine percent of compromised web pages tracked this year were on legitimate web sites; including web sites belonging to Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and ironically, security vendors. WOT (Web of Trust), a free Internet Browser resource that has established an impressive 4.5/5.0 star user rating on CNET, tests web sites you are […] [...]
» WOT (Web of Trust) - Participate in Your Own Internet Security // May 6, 2008 at 1:29 pm |
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
Matt // May 6, 2008 at 6:14 pm |
Great post. I just saw this today on something else. looks great!
Deborah Salmi // May 7, 2008 at 2:37 am |
Your turn of a phrase is inventive. “Transparent warning curtain”, “people driven security” and “Stop · Think · Click” express what we at WOT believe and want to share with others. Thanks, Bill, for writing a thoughtful piece and supporting our mission to make the Internet safer for everyone!
Sai krishna // May 7, 2008 at 3:13 am |
I think there is a spelling mistake in the categories list. I guess it should be WINDOWS tips and tools
and not ‘widows’ tips and tools.
Mark Schneider // May 7, 2008 at 9:01 pm |
Very cool little plug- in for Firefox. I’m using it with McAfee SiteAdvisor which seems to work in a similar way. So far the results from SiteAdvisor match those of WOT. What else is nice as I notice 0 resource hit from WOT which is always a concern for anything to do with security. Keep up the great posts!
raincoaster // May 7, 2008 at 9:35 pm |
Well widows are notoriously difficult to deal with, so maybe that’s not a typo.
Ben // May 7, 2008 at 9:54 pm |
I agree, wot is fantastic
Lady Elizabeth // May 8, 2008 at 12:30 am |
i wrote a blog about this not too long ago, then found your blog in the “top posts around wordpress.com” great minds think alike! just thought i’d stop by and give you a compliment as i really enjoyed reading this post! keep on writing!
sincerely,
lady elizabeth
Web Hosting Sri Lanka // May 8, 2008 at 1:34 am |
Thanks for Sharing.
Regards
Team DH
mywot.com: Participate in Your Security « relationary // May 8, 2008 at 2:00 am |
[...] Mullins gives a more indepth review here. Posted in google, privacy, trustworthiness, vendor reliability, web of trust, [...]
sanyata // May 8, 2008 at 3:03 am |
thanks for the info
SecuSolutions Blog » Blog Archive » Crowdsourcing Security // May 8, 2008 at 3:16 am |
[...] Bill Mullins reports on his blog Tech Thoughts: WOT (Web of Trust), a free Internet Browser resource that has established an impressive 4.5/5.0 [...]
Pandu // May 8, 2008 at 4:17 am |
Yes, this is very fantastic, I’ve already installed it in my firefox and this tool is awesome, shows me which site is safe or not.
Seko // May 8, 2008 at 4:55 am |
very interesting, i am gonna try it, good job for the group who made this handy project
coconews // May 8, 2008 at 10:09 am |
Hello, Bill
Great blog, very informative.
I hope you don’t mind if I link your blog to mine. I started up a new blog that is called “Things you may want to know”
http://thingsyoumaywanttoknow.wordpress.com
My blog will cover a variety of other topics people may want to know about, but when it comes to things you want to know about the computer world, you’re tops!
Martin Gerner // May 8, 2008 at 3:27 pm |
Sounds like a nice piece of software, but there is quite a fundamental flaw. In the post you say that 79% of infected sites are “legitimate” – that is, owned by big businesses, that would normally be trusted.
WOT does not solve that problem. It warns people when they are going around in the shadier parts of internet – not when they are visiting the department of homeland defense (some of their pages were affected by the mentioned exploits).
So yes, good piece of software. Doesn’t have anything to do with the problem you described though.
web dr // May 8, 2008 at 11:51 pm |
[...] for spyware, spam, viruses, browser exploits, unreliable online shops, phishing, and online scams. Whttp://billmullins.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/wot-web-of-trust-participate-in-your-own-web-security/Download Dr.Web CureIt! Free anti-virus scanner, cures computers …This is a FREE anti-virus and [...]
exploited // May 10, 2008 at 6:59 pm |
[...] for spyware, spam, viruses, browser exploits, unreliable online shops, phishing, and online scams. Whttp://billmullins.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/wot-web-of-trust-participate-in-your-own-web-security/National Center for Missing & Exploited ChildrenOfficial site for current information on Missing [...]
internet browsers // May 12, 2008 at 2:17 pm |
[...] for spyware, spam, viruses, browser exploits, unreliable online shops, phishing, and online scams. Whttp://billmullins.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/wot-web-of-trust-participate-in-your-own-web-security/Maxthon Browser – Full-Featured Browser… up with new ways to use the Internet So out of the box, [...]
Great News for WOT Lovers - Monty Widenius Now Onboard « Bill Mullins’ Weblog - Tech Thoughts // February 16, 2009 at 1:29 pm |
[...] additional information and download links, please read “WOT (Web of Trust) – Participate in Your Own Internet Security”, on this [...]