Which gets more input from users, SiteAdvisor or WOT?

I've been using WOT for a long time but was wondering can you use both?

 

WOT IMHO is useless. There is to much user input. If a user doesnt like a site they can simply rate the site poorly in all areas and the site rating goes down. To many people do that and a good site ends up with a bad reputation. Besides I think I can decide for myself weather a site is good or bad on my own.

Here is a bit of info on the McAfee SiteAdvisor:

http://www.siteadvisor.com/howitworks/index.html

If your using Firefox you can look into LinkExtend:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10777/?src=api

It is much more reliable than WOT in my eyes as its not a single source, but a bunch of professional and user based sources clumped together. Its also highly configurable.

Another item you may be interested in is AVG's Link Scanner:

http://linkscanner.avg.com/

Rather than having end users rate a site it just scans the link to make sure its safe from online threats.

And another like AVG's Link Scanner, but web based:

http://www.urlvoid.com/

Basically does the same thing, but doesnt require an addon or an installed program. I use this occasionally for a quick check. I would prefer to keep all of these things off of my system and just sandbox my browser that way I dont have to worry about a sites reputation or if its malicious or not.

I also find it easier to employ DynDNS through my router with configured security areas. I find that DynDNS is more accurate than some of these other tools.

 

WOT has more users and is more accurate. Use both on google looking up screen savers and you will see that SiteAdvisor rates just about all even the dangerous sites green. I was very disappointed in it.

 

I'm staying with WOT.

There have been some complaints of MSA causing issues with GMail.

 

Why is either one to be counted on? Remember this is the opinion of others and perfectly safe sites have been listed as bad in the way of spite in some cases. From a security standpoint both are next to useless IMHO.

Thanks
Wildman

 

Airplanes crash. Doesn't mean we should stop travelling by air.

I'm not sure whether this is going to be an A versus B (with a little C) type of thread.

 

A vs B only applies to Antivirus software.

Regardless I think LinkExtend is the best choice here. Its the lesser of all 3 evils.

 

its already been explained countless times that WOT does not simply work off of user ratings, it uses other already established sources as well in its ratings like phistank, etc. plus the voting system isnt a simple rating system of massive amounts of people rating a site bad, its moderated and depending on the user, some votes are weighted heavier, such as a contributor for example, or someone whos already given many legitimate and good ratings and are seen as more trustworthy than someone whos just logged onto WOT for the first time. but either way ther are checks in WOT so that its not abused and so that it doesnt only rely on human votes

 

You have Google, you have your malware domain lists so why not test away with Linkextend?

When done and WOT is only one left find out how it works and how to handle all the scared clickhappy people voting up and down A hint is to only let it react on glowing red sites. Then it is effective and less annoying. WOT haters are not all employed by Mcafee, Symantec - it does suck badly but for every site that is voted wrong there will be 1000s voted correctly, mainly because tossers are kept out of it and sources are more professional.

Most react strongly to false positives so a few FPs and X is useless - in WOTs case green color of marketing also play a rôle. Green is just as interesting to them as red, but how it is.

 

I find WOT close to useless... most sites aren't even rated and I just don't have the time to rate them my self.

 

I find WOT much more reliable than SiteAdvisor.
WOT has been informed on websites that SiteAdvisor lacked Rating Info.

 

While WOT is probably correct for many websites, I find enough of the ratings useless. Most of the times when I check a red rated website, there are almost 100 ratings but no comments. I ignore most of these red ratings and go to the website anyway (who knows, maybe these ratings are correct, for example, if the website distributes malware, I might not have any vulnerable targeted applications).

Do you not mean like LinkExtend?

 

If you keep focus on red sites I doubt it get much better than WOT + of course a more pro service like DynDns, Norton, ClearCloud or whatever. I prefer Dyndns since it has white list feature. FPs happen or I run in to sites I want to visit no matter what. Best thing about WOT is the plugin which let you ignore anything but red sites so it can be used as a security tool. What they should have focused on, not the promotional "seal of trust" crap.

If you start to like it I suggest you keep away from WOT site, especially their forum. That did it for me anyway. Another related part I did not like is the sheep factor. Like a major popular download site being green as grass while same site hosts and promote rogue registry booster crap the very same crowd of people vote red. There is no logic or wisdom among those people but they are amateurs. Expectations are wrong, they have no balls

Remember that WOT do not see security as black and white. Is a rainbow of colors so we should discuss and vote up/down. They recognize weakness in that approach so their "system" will protect against voting hooligans. http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/hackforums.net what a nice site we have here, gets even more cute if you sign up. Oh the always reliable hphosts do not approve, see page 5. His vote counts and is typically followed by a little army of I THINK SO TOO! people. Well may be we should tell him to shut up? And so red becomes green. But it is not fair to point out such cases. Mcafee, Norton have ignored many sites as well, regardless of comments. Their bots have mistanken just as many. Name of the game. I still think WOT is the most effective and thanks to plugin the easiest to live with.

 

URLVoid scans links for malicious code. LinkExtend doesnt. Its an addon that has alot of different databases that it pulls information from.

 

urlvoid.com is like one of the services offered in LinkExtend (more so than the below).

vscan.urlvoid.com (which I forgot about) is like AVG LinkScanner.

 

Another tool that's very handy for those "Should I really open that link?" moments:
-http://www.freedrweb.com/linkchecker/?lng=en-
And it's Dr. Web.

 

Not really. The vscan.urlvoid.com service you mention, will scan urls for malware with various antivirus engines. LinkScanner will verify whether or not the url you're about to enter contains or not malicious active content (active as in it will automatically try to infect your system - drive-by download/exploit).

Two different purposes.

I'd go for LinkScanner + some third-party DNS service, if this DNS service proves to be efficient in terms of speed as well.

 

Are those antivirus engines able to detect certain exploits from a URL?