Welcome to WOT: Web of Trust
The wiki about the world's first online community for website reputation rating that anyone can edit.

Free Web safe surfing tool provides protection against online threats

WOT Web of Trustis a unique community-based safe surfing tool that uses an intuitive traffic-light style rating system to help Internet users stay safe as they search, browse, and shop online. The WOT security add-on provides safety ratings to search results when using Google, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, and other popular sites, helping people protect their computers and personal information. Web site ratings are continuously updated by millions of members of the WOT community and from numerous trusted sources, such as phishing site listings. The free add-on works with Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Safari browsers and can be downloaded at http://www.mywot.com.

Watch the WOT demo here

How WOT Works

Added by Debsalmi

Once downloaded, the WOT icon appears in the browser's navigation toolbar, next to the address bar. Once the user navigates to a site they want to rate, they click the WOT icon. This will open a rating window.

WOT members can rate a website using four components:

• Trustworthiness - the "poor" rating indicates Internet scams like lottery or identity theft risks, credit card fraud, phishing, spyware, adware, malware or computer viruses. The site may obtain a rating of "unsatisfactory" if it contains annoying advertisements, excessive pop-ups, or content that makes the browser crash.
• Vendor reliability - tells you whether the site is safe for buying and selling, or for business transactions in general. An “excellent” rating indicates superior customer service, timely delivery of products or services and overall customer satisfaction. A "poor" rating indicates possible fraud or a bad shopping experience.
• Privacy - tells you whether the site has a privacy policy that protects your personal identity and data. For example, does the social networking service you use give you the means to determine what is public and what remains private? Does the site have opt-in privacy options? A "poor" rating indicates concern that your data may be sold to 3rd parties, be stored indefinitely or be turned over to law enforcement without a warrant, etc.
• Child safety - indicates if the site contains age-inappropriate material. This includes mature content meant for adults: Content depicting nudity, sexual content, violence, vulgar or hateful language or content that encourages dangerous or illegal activities.

Added by Debsalmi

After using a popular search engine like Google, a tiny icon appears beside the link—green for go, yellow for proceed with caution and red for stop. WOT warns about sites that can damage computer hard drives or cause other trouble. WOT has information for more than 30 million websites, and the reputation database is updated every thirty minutes.

WOT ratings are shown on Google, Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, Wikipedia, Digg and other popular sites. The user interface comes in 14 languages and a color-blind version. WOT is a free browser add-on that works with Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari. WOT is available for PC, MAC and Linux.

Privacy

WOT has a strict privacy policy, and they claim to follow it to the letter. The WOT website states, "The WOT add-on collects information only for computing website ratings, performing statistical analysis, and preventing abuse of our service. Any information that is no longer needed for these purposes is deleted."

The Website Reputation Scorecard

Added by Debsalmi

The Website Reputation Scorecard shows data on popularity, a link to the WHOIS domain entry, detailed rating information with graphics, and a section for user comments and references.

To see a website's reputation, replace "wikia.com" with a URL at the end of this address: http://www.mywot.com/scorecard/wikia.com

Company History

WOT Services Ltd. was founded in Finland in 2006 by two graduate students, Timo Ala-Kleemola and Sami Tolvanen. The mission of WOT Services is to work together with the WOT community to increase trust on the Web.

WOT’s patent-pending reputation management system computes ratings from individual users and trusted sources based on trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy, and child safety. Sophisticated algorithms guarantee objective reputation management, ensure reliability, and protect against manipulation.

WOT Services focuses on developing and providing software and services for the WOT community and on promoting the community's goals. The company is based in Helsinki, Finland.

Media Attention

• PC Magazine The WOT add-on is reviewed by Neil Rubenking [1]

• BNET WOT is reviewed in BNET's Business Hacks by Rick Broida [2]

• cnet.com WOT for Internet Explorer 20090414 received a 5 star rating based on a June 10, 2009 review by CNET staff.[3]

• Gizmo Top Pick for Best Freeware Internet Security Check WOT won the top pick award at Gizmo's Best Freeware Internet Security Check [4]

External Links

WOT: Web of Trust