Regular readers of this site are well aware that for the last year or more, I have written extensively about WOT, Web of Trust.
What is WOT?
WOT is a free Internet Browser resource that has established an impressive 4.5/5.0 star user rating on CNET, and has become one of the most downloaded FireFox Add-ons at the Mozilla add-on site, with over 4 million users.
If you are an Internet Explorer 8 user (and this is the only release of Internet Explorer you should be using), you’ll be happy to learn WOT is now available for this latest IE release.
According to Matt Crowley, Program Manager, Internet Explorer Extensibility, “WOT is a great example of how add-ons can extend the user experience, functionality, and security of a web browser. This represents the type of quality and usefulness we’re aiming to showcase on ieaddons.com.”
Web of Trust offers Internet users preventive protection against Web-based attacks, online scams, identify theft, and unreliable shopping sites. The WOT security add-on provides safety ratings to search results when using Google, Yahoo!, Digg and other popular sites, helping users protect their computers and personal information.
WOT operates in a unique fashion in order to offer this active protection to the Internet user community. It stands out from the crowd of similar applications, by soliciting the opinions of users/members whose views on web site safety are incorporated into the overall site safety rating. According to WOT, the user community now has reputation data on over 20 million sites worldwide.
The shared information on a site’s reputation includes trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy, and child safety. As well, in order to achieve maximum security coverage, WOT uses thousands of trusted sources including phishing site listings, to keep users protected against rapidly spreading threats.
How WOT works
The Browser add-on 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, shown earlier, triggered on visiting a dangerous site.
Recognizing that up to ten percent of Internet users are at a disadvantage however, due to colorblindness, and cannot rely on an Internet safety system based on color coding, the Web of Trust development team recently released an adaptive version of WOT. This version incorporates equivalent alternative information, through assistive or adaptive technology, for colorblind users.
This colorblind accessible application provides the same critical benefits to those individuals who have to contend with visual impairments, as it has to those of us who have come to rely on WOT as a major defense against the pervasive hazards we encounter on the Internet.
WOT integrates seamlessly with search engine results from popular search engines including Google, Yahoo, MSN and other popular sites, and provides impressive protection against Internet predators.
WOT recently added the top three web-based email services – Google Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, to its free security protection. You can now feel more confident and secure since WOT checks links embedded in your email, and warns you of dangerous web sites so that you can avoid spyware, spam, phishing, identity theft and other Internet scams; before you click on dangerous embedded links.
Quick facts – WOT checks the following on each web site visited:
Trustworthiness
Vendor reliability
Privacy
Child Safety
Ratings for over 20 million websites
Downloaded 4,000,000 times +
The WOT browser add-on is light and updates automatically
WOT rating icons appear beside search results in Google, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Gmail, etc.
Settings can be customized to better protect your family
WOT Security Scorecard shows rating details and user comments
Works with Internet Explorer and FireFox
Interface supports English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, Chinese and Japanese.
WOT now has customizable protection:
WOT provides four convenient one-click protection options that can be changed instantly depending on the situation.
Fast facts:
Light protection suits experienced Web users
Basic protection guides the user by giving warnings
Maximum Safety stops dangerous Web sites from loading
Parental Control blocks access to Web sites with a poor child safety rating and no rating at all
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
Download at: MyWot
Bill Mullins' Weblog - Tech Thoughts 
Thank you, Bill, for all the support you have given to WOT. We are continually developing and improving the system to make it more useful for people around the world. Thank you for helping us spread the word.
I just read an IC3 report that said Internet fraud had risen by 33% in the USA from 2007. That amounted to losses of $265,000,000. They warn that figures will probably rise through 2009 as the global economic downturn deepens. With that in mind, you cannot be too careful or too paranoid about your level of protection. The WOT community helps greatly by rating sites and reporting their experiences, especially from unreliable online shops which received the most common complaints.
As you have said before, we are all in this together!
Safe surfing,
Deborah
Web of Trust
Hey Deb,
Thank you for the comment.
The “new” WOT looks terrific!
Bill
Hi Bill,
WOT is really useful. I had also written a post about it on my blog here http://webtoolsandtips.com/pc-security/wot-free-internet-security-tool-for-firefox/.
But, a few days later I found that my own blog was flagged by somebody as dangerous. Deborah, who has commented above, was helpful, in getting that tag removed.
I am just commenting this because I find that the algorithm can be manipulated sometimes, if only a few people have expressed opinion about your website.
Thanks,
You raise an important point.
I too believe that the algorithm can be manipulated, to some extent, by
certain unscrupulous people. However, given that WOT provides protection on
over 20 Million sites, the incidence of manipulation is, in my view,
extremely low – well within the acceptable range for a browser add-on.
On the other hand, if one’s personal site has been effected adversely by an
undeserved “poor” rating, I can well imagine the difficulty this might
present. I’m glad Deborah was able to assist you in dealing with this.
Perhaps a review system of some type, should be an issue WOT needs to
consider.
Bill