What is your favourite "Linkscanner" in 2012?

[roger_m]

Originally Posted by Joxx

Yeap...
Unfortunately those who bash WOT don't even understand the reasoning behind it.

You are wrong, I bash WOT and understand the reasoning. I'm sure WOT works quite well at blocking harmful sites (I've never used it or any other site/link scanner, but have often looked at website ratings on the mywot website). However there are a lot of safe sites which are given red ratings. Sadly a lot of people who contribute to wot and SiteAdvisor have absolutely no idea what they are talking about, and will quite happily give a website a bad rating because they think it contains malicious downloads, without being able to provide any proof to support their claims.

It would be useful if the ratings were accurate.

[Aventador]

Originally Posted by roger_m

You are wrong, I bash WOT and understand the reasoning. I'm sure WOT works quite well at blocking harmful sites (I've never used it or any other site/link scanner, but have often looked at website ratings on the mywot website). However there are a lot of safe sites which are given red ratings. Sadly a lot of people who contribute to wot and SiteAdvisor have absolutely no idea what they are talking about, and will quite happily give a website a bad rating because they think it contains malicious downloads, without being able to provide any proof to support their claims.

It would be useful if the ratings were accurate.

THANK YOU...........................If people actually started to read the WOT user comments then everyone else could realize what we are talking about. I actually tried WOT many years ago. A site came up red so I went to see what people had to say about it. One lady wrote 'They asked me for my personal information". Or "The software I downloaded from this site is horrible". A site adviors job should be to tell someone that this particular site contains malware which could harm your pc if downloaded. Just because some moron got scammed into buying some screensaver does not mean the site is actually harmful. They are made at feel cheated so they blame the site rather then themselves. WOT is a community based site advisor. Norton,McAfee,AVG and Bitdefender are all professional companies which have highly trained people to warn you if a site actually contains malicious content. I also did not care to see ratings on every email which had a web site link. I don't need that in my email.

[acr1965]

What a site adviser or link scanner should do is what it claims. Some people want to know about shopping experiences of others on store sites or whether a site engages in spamming, has pornography, etc. WOT has warning categories which can be selected...so if a person does not want to know about vendor reliability or child safety they can simply uncheck those categories. Should WOT have more categories? Probably so.

For a link checker/site rater to only report if a site is potentially malicious may be the type you want but not necessarily what info everyone wants. Others may want more or different information. I've used the site raters offered by McAfee, AVG, BitDefender and Norton. I didn't like any of them and went back to WOT. WOT is far from perfect but seems less annoying than the others, so I use it for now.

All the site rating tools have some flaws or another, including WOT. If I want to be secure on the web and not fall prey to some malicious site then I will surely use something more secure than some site rater, real time scan or not. Disabling js, using noscript, sandboxie, etc (or a combo of those) is far more secure than some flavor of the day site rater.

[safeguy]

Not a favorite per-se but I do use WOT simply for the human input.

I've posted this earlier here but if you don't mind, I'll quote myself.

Originally Posted by safeguy

Some may think that WOT is useless, be it from a security standpoint or a reputation rating standpoint. All of that has been explained on their FAQ page (http://www.mywot.com/en/faq) and there have been discussions on the topic before on forums. I don't feel like rehashing such a topic.

To put it bluntly, anyone can say anything about the reliabilty...I don't really care that much about that aspect of it. Neither do I use WOT as a means of malware prevention nor do I put all of my trust in the ratings either.

What I'm interested in is mainly 1 thing: the comments by WOT users. Sometimes, I just want an easy-and-quick way of finding out the opinions of other web users when I come across certain links/sites. These do not necessarily have to do with security/safety against malware whatsoever. Examples may include what others think of the customer service of an online store, what they think of the writer(s) of a blog, or what they think of the community of a particular site/forum, etc etc.

There's no arguing that since the human factor is involved, comments/opinions/judgement may vary and even be downright biased at times. Nevertheless, getting that is still worth something to me. Yeah, you read that right. I just want that human input.

P.S. Didn't vote.

[Joxx]

@safeguy

Excellent point of view.

[chrisretusn]

How many raters in WOT rate in accordance with these guide lines?

http://www.mywot.com/en/faq/add-on/n...ating-criteria

User ratings are the foundation of Web of Trust. All WOT reputation ratings are based on ratings from our massive community. Everyone who has installed the add-on is allowed to rate and we encourage you to do so. You do not need to be an IT professional in order to rate websites. All we ask if for you to share your experiences from the websites you already know. Being able to learn from other people's experiences is the whole reason for the WOT service.

We ask you to rate websites according to your own personal experience and knowledge while keeping in mind the instructions below:

Rate only websites that you know and have visited
You can rate a website only in the components that are valid and leave the other components unrated
If you feel that a WOT rating for a site is incorrect, please provide your own rating
If you use a site that does not have enough evidence for calculating the rating - indicated by the symbol - please give your own rating
In addition to rating, you can leave a comment explaining your rating/experience for other WOT users

You can rate websites in four rating components:

Trustworthiness reflects the overall trustworthiness of a website: Do you consider this site safe to use? Does this site deliver you what it promises? Do you trust the content of the website? A poor rating may indicate Internet scams, identity theft risks, credit card fraud, phishing, viruses, adware or spyware. The site may contain annoying advertisements, excessive pop-ups or content that makes your browser crash. A poor rating may also indicate that the site's content is not trustworthy.

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.

Many raters apparently rate on like or dislike, disagree or agree with, not by the above criteria. Wilder's is highly rated as a vendor.

[Wild Hunter]

Web Of Trust (WOT).

[The Hammer]

Originally Posted by Aventador

The one that comes with my setup.................BitDefender Traffic Light. WOT is a joke and souly based upon people opinions and not true facts. Most WOT ratings are moron based. Just cause a site asks you for your email doesn't mean its bad.

WOT isn't solely based on opinion.

[chrisretusn]

Originally Posted by The Hammer

WOT isn't solely based on opinion.

You are absolutely correct. Not solely based on opinion. There are, I am sure, a few good ratings in the mix somewhere.

[Amit]

WOT is my favorite of course.

[Sir paranoids]

their all walware in my mind, i do security research every so often and that means surfing the dark-net and im not big on the your not allowed to go to that internet page link jammer spy-ware that phones home and records all your surfing habits vomit topic.

if anything just disable java and flash with a good browser with maybe some additions along the lines of a anti hacking addon or something and its all green on my screen

[nikanthpromod]

None

[gerardwil]

hosts-file.net

[Solarlynx]

None. I used AVG link scanner and Comodo Site Inspector but then abandoned this practice.

[SouthPark]

I like http://www.webutation.net/ because it includes WOT along with other reputation scanners.

[niki]

Originally Posted by Joxx

I'd feel naked without WOT.

Ditto here!

[roger_m]

Originally Posted by SouthPark

I like http://www.webutation.net/ because it includes WOT along with other reputation scanners.

I'd never head of that until now. It's of little use to me, as I like to make my own mind up about websites instead of going by others opinions. I don't care if others think a site is unsafe, all that matters to me is my opinion on a site, which I reach by actually visiting the site.

What I really like about this however is there a 6 services othen than the WOT which are checked. This is good as unlike WOT (a nice idea, but its ratings are so innacurate it's laughable), at least the other services seem to have failry accurate ratings based on several sites I have checked so far.

[J_L]

BitDefender TrafficLight, because of WOT FP's and its effectiveness.

[SouthPark]

Originally Posted by roger_m

I'd never head of that until now. It's of little use to me, as I like to make my own mind up about websites instead of going by others opinions. I don't care if others think a site is unsafe, all that matters to me is my opinion on a site, which I reach by actually visiting the site.

What I really like about this however is there a 6 services othen than the WOT which are checked. This is good as unlike WOT (a nice idea, but its ratings are so innacurate it's laughable), at least the other services seem to have failry accurate ratings based on several sites I have checked so far.

What I don't like about WOT is that it penalizes any site not considered child-safe, so even the safest site with adult content would get a poor rating. I do find WOT useful, however, for evaluating business sites, since it often flags those that advertise by spam or otherwise have honesty problems.