Is WOT trustworthy anymore?

I've been using this for a while and have become rather disgruntled by some of the ratings I've seen on legit websites. I've also seen comments on this forum similar to this, so I was wondering what the general consensus is WOT.

 

Re: Is WOT trustworhty anymore?

Imho, the ratings system has been abused for far too long now for WOT to remain useful.

 

Re: Is WOT trustworhty anymore?

I think it's still useful as a "take it at face value" advisory within a layered security solution.

I just habitually avoid the red ones (regardless of whether the red scorecard is justified or not). There are still plenty of greens to aim your mouse at. (Unless you're searching for screensavers). Perhaps life is too short to wonder whether a red scorecard is correct or not? Also, reds that may have been spammed to green have still got to get through a few more security layers to cause a problem.

Don't forget that as well as the user contributions, there are lists included from various trusted sources: http://www.mywot.com/wiki/Trusted_Sources

 

Re: Is WOT trustworhty anymore?

This is starting to be my train of thought as well.

The thing I don't understand why allot of the sites marked as bad don't even match the site when you look at the information that WOT has for that site?

Anyone tried that new add-on called Webutation? Is it any good, and who is responsible for it.

 

Re: Is WOT trustworhty anymore?

IMO the only reliable addons are those that scan for active exploits. Otherwise it's just a matter of being careful what you download.

 

Re: Is WOT trustworhty anymore?

Something like WOT is great, as an additional layer, for people like my relatives. I'm going to install WOT to one of them, but mainly because I trust the sources WOT team gets their ratings from as well.

The only problem with WOT is giving importance to people's choices. Don't take me wrong, I believe every one who wishes so, should try their best and make Internet a better place for everyone, but such opinions should be sent as a request to change xyz domain category to the WOT team; not directly allow them to give ratings to domains, just because they feel is the proper one.

If the WOT team changes this latter part of how WOT works, then it has all the ingredients to be a decent domain rating system, and that, because it has trustworthy sources. WOT team could also their own work Or, do they

That said, I prefer something like AVG LinkScanner, which, just as Someheresomethere mentioned, is such type of tool - it blocks exploits.

 

Re: Is WOT trustworhty anymore?

I've been using Webutation for a few days. As far as I know it is based in Germany. When you click on the icon it gives you various results including:

Webutation Reviews: Google Safebrowsing: Website Antivirus: WoT (Web of Trust):
G-Rated / Child Safety: GooglePageRank:
Alexa Rank:

Webutation Homepage

You may want to look at BitDefender Traffic Light

 

Re: Is WOT trustworhty anymore?

Webutation seems to be kind of like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/linkextend-safety-kidsafe-site/ . Though perhaps it isn't as thorough? I'm not able to get to Webutations about page at the moment. LinkExtend was information overload for me, but I'm curious about this one as I haven't heard of it up until today.

 

Re: Is WOT trustworhty anymore?

As far as I know the about page has never been up.

I tried to access the info page to get the background on Webutation a couple of weeks ago and got the same, so I don't know what's up with that.

Going to have to check out Traffic Light, and Link Extended is interesting as well.

I like Prevx Safe Online as well, but that's kind of a different category of tool.

 

Re: Is WOT trustworhty anymore?

I like the Chrome extension, but the Firefox one jiggles the GUI!

 

Re: Is WOT trustworhty anymore?

Which one, Dave, LinkExtend or Webutation? If LinkExtend, if I remember right, it isn't FF4 compatible yet.

 

Re: Is WOT trustworhty anymore?

I meant Webutation. Apparently I'm not the only one to notice this. You're right about LinkExtend for Firefox 4.

 

Re: Is WOT trustworhty anymore?

Ahh, okay. Yeah I saw the complaints, that would get annoying fast.

 

Actually, thinking about the OP, I have been wondering about the overall efficacy of WOT for a while now myself. At the end of the day though, I’m not quite sure what to replace it with. I have used Site Advisor (paid version) & far preferred WOT. Admittedly it is sometimes difficult to understand why WOT has some sites marked yellow, where others give them a universal green/safe rating. Having said that Site Advisor virtually gives everything a green rating, including near-rogues like STOPzilla. I still feel safer with WOT than without it though.

 

Re: Is WOT trustworhty anymore?

Exactly! Norton is now offering such a service also but I'm quite satisfied (and have my wife trained to use) with WOT. I've also noticed complaints on here about the other similar apps, so it comes down to which one you prefer more than which one is best.

 

Re: Is WOT trustworhty anymore?

The problem with WOT is that, some people fail to see beyond the community (its users) ratings. They don't seem to want to acept that WOT gets their ratings from reliable sources, which figure in the link provide by sbseven.

If WOT team removed the users ratings - allowing only requests to change some domain category - then, you can bet that people would look at it from a different perspective.

 

Re: Is WOT trustworhty anymore?

Would Avg Linkscanner interfere with your Av's HTTP scanner?

 

m00nbl00d, problem is WOT fail to realize weakness of "community" not people misunderstanding WOT. Unless they have change their product recently they are ALL about community. Highly encourage any idiot to click and judge away. If they completely ignored all those votes they would have to call them self something else than WOT since community is such a big part of their image, and I think also understanding of them self. They do believe in their system.

I don't see how you can ignore their community. At least not once you after you have run in to it. There are ways around that like excluding everything but red sites as to avoid Mr. Malwarefighters half-red and half-yellow judgements on sites he have no clue about but still. Making it in to a security only tool is failing to understand WOT though. All those colors are there for a reason.

 

WOT is all about community... well, that will depend on what you consider community.

But, what I meant was that WOT team shouldn't give as much as power as it does to their user base. WOT team gets ratings from these sources -http://www.mywot.com/wiki/Trusted_Sources

These are reliable sources. WOT should work around these, and only provide a submission service to allow their user base to send request to place xyz domain under a different category/rating. But, not blindly do it; they must analyze the domain(s) by themselves.

Just as an example, BrightCloud, owned by Webroot, has its own crawling system, and scores domains accordingly, but they allow anyone to submit requests to change xyz domain category/rating. Why do they do that? Because they aren't foolproof. You may spot a phishing/fradulent domain, and request them to change the score it has, which may be green, so that it reflects what the domain really is - red.

But, WOT team started something, that most likely they won't be able to kill, unless they're willing to, most likely, lose quite a few users who may feel bad about it.

-edit-

By the way, when I mentioned some people fail to understand WOT, I wasn't talking about people who provide ratings. I was mentioning people who don't advise WOT based on the fact they can't see beyond the community ratings. That is, they fail to see WOT gets ratings from reliable sources. The problem, and I agree, is the community ratings, which may be biased.

 

Re: Is WOT trustworhty anymore?

The worse that may happen is LinkScanner scanning traffic from a domain that may be blacklisted by the antivirus web shield/network shield. This will result in LinkScanner being blocked from scanning the web browser HTTP traffic. No harm done, though, as access to the domain is blocked by the AV web shield.

 

Yes but those sources are only part of WOT. That is what some people really do fail to understand - partly because it does not make any sense. WOT is as much interested in super-green votes, just look at their frontpage "Increase sales with WOT Trust Seals". That mix is why they are questioned sometimes and anyone with a bit of imagination can see some problems. Also another reason why they need "community" votes.

 

What some of you are missing here is that the WOT ratings hurt sites that are other wise harmless when the average user looks at the what community and all they see is:

Spam site
Kiddy porn
Viruses 'O' plenty..etc.

Sure it meant as a guide, but when someone sees these big red circles or the above mentioned, how likely do you think allot of WOT users are to go to that site even though by most standards it's safe.

The biggest problem I see with WOT right now is, it is to easy to direct traffic away from a site for fear of being infected, and you really have to look behind the ratings and think who is making these ratings?

I agree that WOT is still useful and there are some well meaning people behind it, but Internet shilling is alive and well.

WOT really needs to cross reference their ratings once in a while to weed out the tomfoolery .

 

Don't take me wrong, I agree with you folks. But, as I mentioned before, the fact it has those sources behind it, it gives WOT some credit. What ruins it all are those user ratings, which may be biased.

I respect the sources behind WOT, which is why I give it some credit. If I dislike what I see, then I'll remove it from my relative's system. It will have no place there.

I prefer the likes of AVG LinkScanner, BitDefender's TrafficLight, BrightCloud (despite the fact it only provides scores and doesn't block, AFAIK). But, if WOT plays nicely, why not?

I can always implement some other way of having access to some of the sources behind WOT, and use those lists directly, which will be updated 24/7 (most of them). WOT doesn't update their scorecards as soon as they get need information from those sources. They actually wait 24 hours.

I'm not blindly trusting WOT to protect relatives, in what comes to fraudulent websites. But, until I give it a proper testing, which I never did... I can't say it sucks, if I don't know if it does... I respect other people's opinions about it, though. I appreciate your feedback.

 

I think it might help to have the trusted sources play a more central and visible role. I'd like to see the scorecard show trusted source ratings separate from community ratings.

I'd also like a few more configuration options available so that I can have extra control of the information that's going into the rating I'm seeing.

For instance, options to:

• Apply more weight to trusted source ratings
• Allow a trusted source negative rating to override community ratings
• Ignore community ratings altogether
• Ignore ratings older than 6 months (say)
• Apply the "unknown" rating until 'n' ratings for site available

Thanks to the OP for starting this topic. It made me investiagte and question WOT a bit more. The data could certainly do with more cleaning and greater audit, but I'm still reasonably happy with my assessment of the service I made upthread.