Web of Trust

Download the free WOT browser add-on and immediately a WOT icon appears in your 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.



The Website Reputation Scorecard
The Website Reputation Scorecard was introduced with WOT version 3. The 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. The references come from negative sources such as phishing and spam black lists or positive sources like del.ici.ous, Digg, or Wikipedia.


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

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.

The user ratings complement data WOT receives from sources such as listings of phishing sites from Phishtank. The WOT system processes the ratings and produces a reputation rating for each website. Attempts to manipulate the reputation data are effectively countered via sophisticated algorithms.

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 over 18 million websites, and the reputation database is updated every thirty minutes.

WOT ratings are shown on Google, Yahoo!, Gmail, Wikipedia, Digg, del.icio.us, AOL, MSN and other popular sites. WOT works with Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers. The user interface comes in 10 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Swedish or Finnish. WOT is a free browser add-on that works with Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Learn more about Web of Trust MyWOT