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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 safety 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 Internet security add-on works with Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers and can be downloaded at http://www.mywot.com.

Watch the WOT demo here

How WOT Works

WOT rating window

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 - Rates whether the site is safe for buying and selling, or for business transactions in general. A "poor" rating indicates possible fraud or a bad shopping experience.
• Privacy - Tells whether the site owner can be trusted, if it's safe to supply an email address, and download files. A "poor" rating indicates spam, adware, or spyware.
• Child safety - Indicates whether the site contains age-inappropriate material of a sexual, hateful, or violent nature, or content that encourages dangerous or illegal activities.

WOT rating icons

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 on 24 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 Firefox and Internet Explorer. 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 MyWOT 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 Security Scorecard

Website Reputation Scorecard

The Website Security 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. (formally Against Intuition, Inc.) was founded in Finland in 2006 by two graduate students, Timo Ala-Kleemola and Sami Tolvanen. Their mission is to make the Internet safer by letting users share their experience of websites and the services they offer.

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