CNET Editors' note: The Download Now link will prompt a local download of the Firefox extension. To install the extension directly, open the file using your Firefox browser.
CNET Editors' review
Web of Trust (WOT) for Firefox provides users with a simple meter for gauging a Web site's danger level. With easy to read warnings, this program only leaves one thing to chance with your safety.
The program does not have anything to offer on your computer's desktop because it embeds itself into your Firefox browser for quick access. Depending on the Web site you visit, the program's icon turns red, yellow, or green to illustrate the danger level. Clicking on the icon displays a chart showcasing Trustworthiness, Vendor Reliability, Privacy, and Child Safety. The warnings are intuitive and should not require a trip to the Help file to understand. The program functioned well for our tests, glowing green for popular news sites and red for less reliable pages. Our only complaint is that users must dig into the settings menu to have WOT stop a dangerous site from opening on your computer. So until that time, concerned users may be exposed to potentially harmful sites. However, once this is activated, the program does a great job of warning you and providing the option to continue or stop. WOT also provides interesting features that allow worldwide users to rate Web sites for danger, thus creating an online community of like-minded people.
With a simple interface, easy-to-understand functions, and interesting features, we found this freeware to be a helpful download for users looking to increase their online security.
Publisher's Description
From WOT Services:
Keep yourself safe from spyware, adware, spam, viruses, browser exploits, unreliable online shops, phishing, and other Internet scams. With the free WOT browser add-on, you can easily see the reliability of companies and websites. WOT will warn you and save your computer before you interact with a harmful site. WOT, Web of Trust, is an online community for reputation rating that lets Internet users share their knowledge of websites, helping you stay in control when surfing the Web.
Besides its users, WOT uses hundreds of trusted sources such as phishing site listings to keep you protected against rapidly spreading online threats. As you search with Google, you will see a tiny icon next to the Web link: green to go, yellow to slow down, red to stop. You can easily customize the protection level to your way of surfing the Web. WOT has information on 31 million Web sites. WOT ratings are shown also on Yahoo, Gmail, Wikipedia, and other sites.
What's new in this version: Version 20111107 fixes potential issues with the warning screen and the settings page.
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All versions:
3.9 starsout of 131 votes
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Current version:
2.3 starsout of 3 votes
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My rating:
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Results 1-3 of 3
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"Keeps Browsing safe"
Version: Web of Trust for Firefox 20111107
Pros
Easy as pie
Cons
None at all
Summary
Keeps my Browsing safe
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"WOT is not safe"
Version: Web of Trust for Firefox 20111107
Pros
Great concept.
Cons
Vulnerable to manipulation by hacks to denigrate sites they disagree with.
Summary
Sites with no commercial intention, malware and virus free, get trashed. Controversial opinions regarding social, environmental, medical and other issues get targeted and degraded unfairly.
When you think about, WOT, in its current form, is a dangerous threat to a free Internet. By giving it such a high rating, the editors of cNet have lost credibility. -
"Web of Trust is a scam, blackmail operation. Extortion."
Version: Web of Trust for Firefox 20111107
Pros
Web of Trust is being sued.
Cons
Pay or have your website marked as "dangerous" and lose Facebook visitors. Web of Trust practices extortion and large scale astroturf campaigns to protect themselves from scrutiny. Many results on Google for their lawsuit goes to their public relations drivel.
Rates many safe websites poorly without giving any clear recourse or explanation to website owners on their so-called "Reputation Scorecard" page. WoT profits from website owners spending money in an attempt to make websites more accessible again from Facebook after WoT defames them. This is extortion and Facebook is playing right into it to keep their users within their walled garden instead of following safe links to outside websites.Summary
The forums are extremely hostile to those who question WoT. For example, the companies suing WoT are referred to as "idiots", etc. - And many of the ratings are due to agendas and WOT does nothing to circumvent that. To give you an idea of the inanity, there's people with mottos such as "Truth is my b*tch" attacking websites they "don't like" instead of searching for malware or any other valid issue.
Another case and point, beware if you or any website you ever affiliate with say anything critical of Web of Trust. This site, mywotscam.com, is being slandered against because they are pointing out flaws with WoT (mywot.com). I'm seeing people at WoT saying mywotscam.com harbors malware, which is a libelous lie. I looked up mywotscam.com with security websites and it scanned 100% clean and safe.
For example, the riaa.org website as of 11-23-2011 is rated in such a way that many will consider the website to have issues with malware. WoT has labeled it a dangerous website with "Warning! This site has a poor reputation."
http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/riaa.org
This is because the community has said they don't like the RIAA. Instead of rating the website on its true safety, they rate the organization based on opinion. I mean, I'm no fan of the RIAA, but I wouldn't LIE and give the false impression that their website is dangerous, etc.
WoT should warn people of malware, porn and scams on websites, but instead they would rather have honest people give them money to stop their fraudulent extortions. WOT is the scam to watch out for. Web of Trust is a scam. It's a Web of Lies.
Updated on Nov 23, 2011
This is the kind of bullying tactics you can expect from these hive mind cretins at WoT.
http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/mywotscam.com
Updated on Nov 23, 2011Last but not least, check out this. This is just one case of many similar accounts I've found.
I've edited for brevity but you can read the rest here:
http://complaintwire.org/Complaint.aspx/tqaGZ0CgeAByhQjOPaHCqQ
" .... What happens is someone can login to the WOT account, and rate a site as phishy or unsecure for absolutely no reason at all. When this happens, anytime a customer goes to your website, a large popup will occur stating this is an unsafe site, and you should not proceed. This is ridiculous since WOT does not have any means of checking to see if this information is infact accurate.
They just go off of that single rating input by a random person. Now, the only way to have this popup removed is to either buy their "Web of Trust Seal" which costs $451/year, or have tons of people sign up for an account in their system, which in turn will bring the company more revenue as well. ... "
Results 1-3 of 3
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