Hi all,

As most of you know, in the last couple of months we’ve been working on the new WOT version, which will introduce you to a new and improved, yet very familiar, Web of Trust.

We are happy to announce that we are now rolling out this new version!

What does that mean for you? The new WOT will have the same core-functionality, allowing users to rate websites and site-owners to request/discuss ratings for their website. While keeping the same values, the new WOT will be much easier to use and master for the average user.

The new version includes significant improvements to the User Interface of the extension, as well as a new and simplified rating flow. These changes allows WOT to become even more engaging, helping new users make an impact with their ratings and grow the community of ‘web guardians’.

It is important for us to emphasize the fact that we’ve been testing, improving and adjusting this version with our beta group, which includes new users, old users and ‘power users’ from within the community.

For those of you who still prefer using the old WOT – you can revert back to the classic WOT via a dedicated link.

We are very excited to launch the new WOT and are looking forward to hearing your feedback.

Kind regards,
WOT Team

The post Introducing The New WOT! appeared first on WOT.

WOT is and always has been about protecting users from dangerous sites and the threats they pose. After taking the WOT add-on off the extension galleries for some much-needed upgrading we are happy to announce that we’re back with a strengthened product, team, and are fully dedicated to making WOT the best and reliable security tool we can.

What happened

It was brought to our attention that our data anonymization techniques were not sufficient. In response, we immediately took our extension off several add-on galleries while we investigated the issues through a security overhaul to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again. We are proud to announce that after over 6 intense weeks we have created a new version and boosted our anonymization techniques to protect our users.

What’s coming

We are excited to introduce some exciting new features and changes to WOT from a product standpoint as well as a focus standpoint. The threats of today have shifted from what they were 10 years ago when we first launched, and it’s time to adapt. WOT is the natural fit in every user’s security suite next to an antivirus, as it protects users from threats that only the human eye can spot. You, our dedicated community, have powered WOT for more than a decade, and we’re proud to serve you.

After a lot of internal searching and hard self-review, we’ve come to the realization that we need to make some changes to WOT as a product for it to remain essential over the next 10 years. We have been developing a strategic product plan internally and soon we’ll be sharing our plan with you in order to bring you into the loop with what’s coming.

We’ve just released a new version of WOT on the Chrome extension gallery which already has several major code updates in order to protect our users privacy and an opt-out option from the user Settings, for users who do not wish to share data with us but still want to have easy access to WOT.

We’re looking forward to making the web a safer place with you.

Sincerely yours,

WOT Team

The post We’re back! appeared first on WOT.

10 years ago today, MyWOT was born with one main purpose – to make the web safe for all users. Today we can say that MyWOT managed to fulfill this purpose for the hundreds of millions of users that installed and relied on MyWOT for their safe browsing over the past decade.

MyWOT was first launched on September 26, 2006. About 3 years after, we had 10 million installs and 1 million registered users. By November 2013, 100 million users installed MyWOT, and since then, it’s downloads surpassed 140,000,000 users, with tens of millions of registered users from around the world, helping make the web a safer place.

When this journey first started, it was hard to imagine where MyWOT would end up. 10 years on and we have an active and engaged community that helps us create a safer web environment. It’s thanks to this amazing community that MyWOT is where it is today, able to provide a safety net to so many of MyWOT’s users around the globe.

Since MyWOT is largely powered by its users and community, we couldn’t imagine celebrating our 10th anniversary without putting them in the spotlight. So we went ahead and interviewed several of our most dedicated and active members. We received so many amazing responses and chose 10 to share with you here!

Kraftwerk, a member since 2009

Q: How did you first come across MyWOT?

A: I received the wrong item from an online merchant where I’ve made a purchase. The merchant didn’t care and I couldn’t do much. I decided to share my experience so that at least I could prevent other from becoming a victim. That’s how I found Web of Trust.

Q: How often do you rate sites?

A: It differs from day to day, depending on how much time I have and how long it takes me to investigate a site. Very often, scammers aren’t easy to spot, so it takes time to expose them.

Q: What’s your motivation for rating and reviewing sites?

A: I consider it extremely unfair to scam, rob or hurt innocent people in any way. Mywot gives me the chance to help a bit to prevent this.

Q: If you could add one feature to MyWOT, what would it be?

A: I know there’s much to improve, but at the moment i am pretty happy with Mywot the way it is. If all runs well, I am fine Although protection against manipulation, for example, has always to be improved. Since scammers always try to trick. But as I said, I can’t name any major problem.

Q: What would you write in MyWOT’s birthday card?

A: Dear Mywot, I can remember when we first met. You were so young and small. But you have grown so much and changed a lot. You are still a great and useful tool for so many people and I am happy that you exist. I’m grateful for those who created and manage you. I wish you a long life and please grow much more. Stay useful, fair and uncorrupted as you are.

ScamKiller73, a user since 2010 and an active member since 2014

Q: How did you first come across MyWOT?

A: Initially I read about WOT on the Internet, but later on some friends of mine recommended it for me.

Q: How often do you rate sites?

A: Rather often and as much as possible.

Q: What’s your motivation for rating and reviewing sites?

A: I want to help to people avoid scams and give them enough warning so that they can stay protected when using the Internet.

Q: If you could add one feature to MyWOT, what would it be?

A: Continue creating tools for web protection for protection against the downloading of malicious software and viruses.

Q: What would you write in MyWOT’s birthday card?

A: I wish WOT further development, hope to see many more new features.

DestinationTruth, active member since 2009

Q: How did you first come across MyWOT?

A: Through the Firefox add on store

Q: How often do you rate sites?

A: Not often any more. Though had been Platinum three times!

Q: What’s your motivation for rating and reviewing sites?

A:  I like having a significant role in improving the safety of the internet.

Q: If you could add one feature to MyWOT, what would it be?

A:  A private section for invited members to discuss sites before rating, out of public eye.

Q: What would you write in MyWOT’s birthday card?

A: Congratulations! I hope the next ten are even more productive.

Matiks, active member since 2009

Q: How did you first come across MyWOT?

A: I’m a website owner and I discovered MyWOT when seeing rating for my site.

Q: How often do you rate sites?

A: Every day.

Q: What’s your motivation for rating and reviewing sites?

A: I like the fact that I help make the web a safer place.

Q: If you could add one feature to MyWOT, what would it be?

A: I’d love an option to export site ratings to XML or CSV.

Q: What would you write in MyWOT’s birthday card?

A: MyWOT has been brings together people with different skills and from different places in the world for 10 years now, with only one common goal to connect them: Make the web a safer place. Thanks and Happy birthday MyWOT!

MarkGles, active member since 2011

Q: How did you first come across MyWOT?

A: It was suggested to me as an improvement on McAfee Site Advisor.

Q: How often do you rate sites?

A: 6 Days a week..

Q: What’s your motivation for rating and reviewing sites?

A: I feel it’s an important job to help provide warnings against scams, frauds, fakes and generally dangerous sites.

Q: If you could add one feature to MyWOT, what would it be?

A: I’d like to see more mass rating tools so I can increase my rating rate.

Q: What would you write in MyWOT’s birthday card?

A: Thanks for all the phish!

Super Hero, active member since 2009

Q: How did you first come across MyWOT?

A: At Mozilla, I tried two other tools before, but I did not find them to be honest on their ratings

Q: How often do you rate sites?

A: Up until recently it was daily, with about 20 sites a day in average. It’s been slower lately due to personal issues, but I hope to get back on track in a few months.

Q: What’s your motivation for rating and reviewing sites?

A: I once fell for a phish spam asking me to give information about my eBay/PayPal account, thank God I was able to contact my bank that started an investigation. They found it was a couple of Australian students that ended up being expelled. Since I got lucky, I felt that I want to help make sure no one else will have to go through what I have. I found that WOT was the best tool for that. It protects me and at the same time allows me to warn others about risky sites.

I think owners of commercial sites are beginning to wake up and realize that by receiving a high trust score by the MyWOT community, they can reach more customers. It’s a win win situation.

Q: If you could add one feature to MyWOT, what would it be?

A: I think WOT should work closer with site owners and offer tips for how to get a higher trust score from the community. This can be an amazing income source for WOT. I smile as I remember that at the age of ten I was already “working” with my father but not earning any money. By the age of twelve I started getting paid too It’s time for WOT to get the opportunity to earn a living and I’d like to see any feature that supports this since I want to see WOT continue to exist in the coming years.

Q: What would you write in MyWOT’s birthday card?

A: Happy ten, WOT! We are the best, but we have just begun.

HL189AT, active member since 2010

Q: How did you first come across MyWOT?

A: After experiencing several spam attacks, it pushed me to look for solutions. That’s how I came across MyWOT.

Q: How often do you rate sites?

A: During the spam attacks I’ve encountered between 2011 and 2014, I think I rated over 1000 sites a month, a hellish but important work. These days I rarely score more than 50 sites a month.

Q: What’s your motivation for rating and reviewing sites?

A:  I hate spam and bad user experience, like forced ads. On the other hand, I believe good sites should be rewarded. MyWOT is a great tool to warn about the bad and reward the good.

Q: If you could add one feature to MyWOT, what would it be?

A: An adblocker under the MyWOT brand would be great.

Q: What would you write in MyWOT’s birthday card?

A: Happy birthday MyWOT. I wish you a long life

Drsumit, active member since 2013

Q: How did you first come across MyWOT?

A: I discovered WOT accidentally after searching world of tanks

Q: How often do you rate sites?

A: I rate sites everyday though I don’t necessarily comment on each one.

Q: What’s your motivation for rating and reviewing sites?

A:  I like the fact that I take an active part in making the web safer for everyone.

Q: If you could add one feature to MyWOT, what would it be?

A: I’d love to know when a site’s ownership changed because I believe that a new owner means the site needs to be reevaluated.

Q: What would you write in MyWOT’s birthday card?

A: HAPPY BIRTHDAY WOT! You’ve been serving the Net community for 10 long years now. You have grown by leaps and bounds – keep growing as the world needs you. My best wishes for a year filled with security, safety and no scams.

A440, active member since 2010

Q: How did you first come across MyWOT?

A: I bumped into by accident.

Q: How often do you rate sites?

A: I rate several times a week.

Q: What’s your motivation for rating and reviewing sites?

A:  I see it as me simply adding to a collective effort of tagging bad sites and offenders, as well as report on sites that are actually safe and useful.

Q: If you could add one feature to MyWOT, what would it be?

A: It would be interesting to see features related to Google search manipulation, since I see this as a form of scams.

Q: What would you write in MyWOT’s birthday card?

A: Happy birthday MyWOT!

MysteryFCM, active member since 2013

Q: How did you first come across MyWOT?

A: I can’t recall now…

Q: How often do you rate sites?

A: Whenever I bump into very dangerous sites.

Q: What’s your motivation for rating and reviewing sites?

A: Protecting web users is important to me.

Q: If you could add one feature to MyWOT, what would it be?

A: I’d like to see MyWOT support Windows phones and multiple machines per account.

Q: What would you write in MyWOT’s birthday card?

A: Happy birthday to one of the most underrated user protection tools!

We’d like to thank the many community members that spent time answering our questions. We wish we could have published all of them here. Our second decade is beginning with a lot of love, support and appreciation and we hope to continue serve the web community with more powerful tools that will help protect their web browsing and assure an overall positive experience.

The post Celebrating 10 Great Years of WOT and Our Wonderful Community appeared first on WOT.

Patchy security has led to surge in malware and phishing attacks on Android users. Browsing to the wrong site can be a costly endeavor for users, who face identity theft, credit card fraud and ransomware attacks from cybercriminals. A user’s chances of suffering an attack would dramatically drop if they knew a site was unsafe before they shared personal information.

The solution
To empower users to protect themselves from these threats and warn others, WOT is proud to announce the release of WOT for Android, the free mobile security app from Web of Trust that warns users against dangerous websites. WOT ratings and reviews are powered by a global community of millions of users who rate websites based on their personal experiences.

Now, when a user gets to a website known for phishing or malware, they will be warned BEFORE they enter personal details. Thinking about making an online purchase from your Android? First check if the site is safe before entering your credit card information.

Who needs protection?
Cyber security is only as strong as its weakest link – the end-user, who can have all the latest security software and hardware – but can be tricked into giving information to the wrong people. That being said, millions of intelligent end-users working together are hard to fool, as evidenced by the success of Web of Trust’s desktop extension, with over 140 million downloads. Adding crowdsourced security for Android is the next logical step.

We hope you enjoy it, and if you do we’d love to see your rating on Google Play!

For support issues please email msupport@mywot.com

How WOT for Android works:

It’s easy to use, with only two steps:

1. Download the app and choose which threats you wish to be warned about.
2. Browse like you’re used to.

You can choose any combination of threats to be warned about, from scams, malware, suspicious, malware or viruses, and adult content. As you browse on your native Android browser or Chrome, you will be warned when you visit a site that are flagged as any of the threats you want to be warned about.

Learn about a site you don’t already know:

Simply search any website for its reputation from the app. You can see the site’s newly-designed scorecard and the reasons behind its rating. Want to rate a site? You can do that from the app as well.

Customize your warning settings:

You can choose not to be warned about certain types of threats. If you get to a site you don’t want to see you can also add it to your personal red list or green list.

The official launch comes after a multi-week beta test with some of WOT’s top users. Thank you all for your hard work – your input has helped make this a much better app!

The post WOT’s App: WOT Mobile Security now live on Google Play! appeared first on WOT.

Farewell old blog!
The old blog template was with us for many years, and while it was as dependable as an old Volvo, it wasn’t very easy on the eyes or simple to maintain “under the hood”. Here are some farewell images of the old blog. It will be missed! (but not too badly)

Hello new blog!
The introduction of our new blog not only is in line with the clean layout we are giving the site, but it is also a strategic move that will help us achieve three goals at once: making the content we share more attractive to our readers, easier to share on social media and conducive for SEO.
In the new blog layout, comments are not made with your username, meaning that anyone is free to submit a comment. If you want your WOT username to appear in your comment, you can sign with it at the end of your comment or even copy a link to your profile at the end of your comment.

Do you want to share content with WOT?
We welcome all suggestions and recommendations for blog and social media content!
We hope you enjoy the new blog!

The post Launching WOT’s New Blog! appeared first on WOT.

We’re excited to announce WOT 3.0, the all-new version of our popular browser extension. We worked hard on improving the UI and fixing bugs. Thanks to our improvements you can now enjoy a much clearer division to “Trustworthiness” and “Child Safety” and a more readable interface. In addition, we are introducing a much flatter and cleaner design that follows our new design direction.

As this is the first major update we made to the WOT add­­on in a while, we wanted to make sure it goes smoothly. Therefore, we planned a gradual roll­out starting with a small percentage of Chrome users. After we work our way through Chrome (and Chromiums), we will release the Firefox and Safari versions which are in development.

You can download it from here now.

Thank you all for the support and for staying with us during quiet times as well. Exciting times are coming and we are planning more product updates.

The WOT Team.

The post Introducing WOT 3.0 appeared first on WOT.

The post WOT was voted as the Best Privacy/Security Add-On appeared first on WOT.

Last year was also full of new adventures for WOT – we introduced our new version of our service and at the same time we came closer to your mobile devices by cooperating with Opera for the Coast by Opera browser for the iPad. Of course, our hard work doesn’t stop here. We are aiming at the top: to become the highest quality website review and reputation service and for this, we are asking your help.

At a time when website security is questionable and new malicious websites pop out every day, WOT with its crowd-sourced approach tries to fight this by working with its strong community. WOT differs on the fact that it can detect threats which only humans can find (such as scam or fraudulent webstores). WOT community is about people who share the same vision with us, they all want to make internet a better place. Such a round number of downloads is also a great opportunity to get to know our community members closer and get to know their motivations for using WOT.

“What I like most in WOT is that it is crowd-sourced. It allows end-users to protect themselves by reporting activity, both good and bad, that they encounter on their daily journey on the Internet.” – GURBL

“I was pleased that it draws from several databases which it considers “trusted sources” to weight the scores. I was surprised that it had solved crowd-sourcing fakery by determining members’ own reliability. And it didn’t bog down my browsers. OK, that’s cool. Volunteers? No money under the table? A global forum with rules of mutual respect? I’m in”. – Greg Lauver

To celebrate this great achievement, we are going to give away 10 unique WOT mousepads to 10 lucky users. In order to participate in the draw, you only have to leave a comment under this post until the end of the month (30/11/2013). The winners will be announced on our blog on December 3rd.

Thank you for helping us in our fight to make the internet a better place and thanks for your trust to us.

The post WOT is celebrating 100.000.000 downloads! appeared first on WOT.

What this means in practice is that Adguard shows a warning when a user is about to enter a site that has poor reputation based on the experiences of the WOT community. Adguard users are also offered more detailed information about the site’s reputation and reviews written by other users. Additionally, if an Adguard user wishes to get the full benefits of the WOT add-on, he or she can download WOT together with the Adguard software.

Adguard is a highly popular European web filtering software that protects web users against annoying ads, phishing, and malicious websites. This partnership is one more step towards building a safer web for all!

If you’re not familiar with Adguard yet, take a tour and check how it works.

The post WOT and Adguard enter a partnership agreement appeared first on WOT.

WOT Services – the company – is a group of people with a vision to make the Internet a safer place for all. Luckily the vision is so strong that millions of people have decided to contribute to it by taking the time to rate sites, share their experiences, and leave explanatory comments to help other people make informed decisions whether to trust a site or not. Just think about it: WOT receives over 1 million new ratings per month and over 300.000 new sites are rated on a monthly basis by the community.

In case you’re interested in the Top Level Domain (TLD) distribution of all the ratings since 2006, here’s some high-level statistics:

Distribution of absolute numbers of all user ratings

• TLDs with the biggest amount of positive ratings are .com, .de, .org, .net and .uk
• TLDs with the biggest amount of negative ratings are .com, .ru, .cn, .info, .net

So, .com is the most common and the most rated TLD with the highest amount of user ratings in absolute numbers.

However, when you look at a single TLD and its ratings, and compare the share of positive and negative ratings, the list of top TLDs changes:

• TLDs with the biggest percentage of positive ratings: .gov, .edu, .int, .fi, .cu
• TLDs with the biggest percentage of poor ratings: .pw, .tl, .io, .sh, .asia.

Looks like people tend to trust .gov, .edu, and .int types of TLDs which in general represent an organization rather than a commercial company.  You may also find it interesting that there are some TLDs of small countries that do get quite a lot of poor ratings and the question is whether they are popular among people with questionable purposes.

In case you haven’t noticed, you can find more WOT community-related statistics here. Also, a list of TLDs can be found here.

The whole WOT team thanks all WOT users for their dedication and support. There will be many interesting news coming up in the near future, so stay tuned!

Warmly,

WOT team

P.S. Guess what is the highest number of ratings received during one day this year (including all ratings from all users in just one day)?

The post WOT reached 80 million downloads! appeared first on WOT.