14 DAY TRIAL // While the Internet is expanding, offering access to thousands of websites containing information that meets the needs of any and all users, it can also harm your computer, as a result of the ever growing number of threats, or interfere with child education, due to inappropriately classed adult content.
In order to be able to safely navigate on the Internet and avoid accessing harmful websites, Against Institution created a simple extension named WOT that works on both Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers. It's free, so all you have to worry about is installing it and learning how to use it, although if you follow a few easy steps you'll get the hang of it in no time. Even though WOT is a simple extension, it will definitely make your life a lot easier because this little program can save you from a lot of problems, headaches and wasted time.
After installation, WOT won't change your Firefox interface too much. It only adds a small round icon next to the Address bar, which you can move anywhere you want. You can access WOT and its settings by clicking on Tools and selecting the extension. You have to keep in mind though that this program does not clean viruses from your computer, it just warns you about risky websites that may try to scam you, deliver malware or send spam to your email address.
WOT has a simple, but efficient system that categorizes any website you may access, it can recognize about over 20 million Internet sites and for each one it uses color-coded icons in order to rate them. The Green one means that the website is completely safe and there is no need for you to worry about malware. The Yellow color notifies you that you need to be cautious when you surf on a certain website because it is not 100% safe; it may contain harmful ads or infected programs, so if you access it you do it at your own risk. The Red color means that you are about to access a dangerous site that contains harmful elements, so every time you try to do this WOT will generate a new page where it will display a big Warning sign followed by the reasons why said website is catalogued as dangerous. If you are certain that WOT is wrong and you decide to proceed anyway, click on Continue anyway after you check that little box in front of The site is good. In order to clear any doubts regarding a website with red-colored icon, this extension allows you to see the scorecard for said website and, in case you think the level of protection needs to be changed, click on Change settings and then Warnings.
In order to be more accurate in its ratings, the WOT team has created an online community with regular users in order for them to share their knowledge. So every time a user reaches uncharted webpages everyone takes advantage of it, because the rating given by said user may influence the color-coded icon. This is why everyone needs to understand his/her responsibility and the fact that his/her rating must be very accurate in order to avoid misleading other users and creating problems. Anyway, WOT won't take any rating into consideration until you prove you are reliable, and you can do that by showing that the ratings previously provided by you are impartial and can be trusted.
But the online community resources are not the only means to rate a website. WOT has access to hundreds of trusted sources such as phishing site lists, white list databases or even black lists. This way, Web of Trust can keep up with the rapid growth of online threats, create an accurate rating for every site and keep you protected from any menace.
The nature of any rated website is created after analyzing four major components. The first one is Trustworthiness, which establishes whether the site is safe or not or if it can be trusted. So, if it displays the color red, stay away and do not access the site because it may contain Internet scams, online fraud, phishing, viruses, spyware or adware. Given the fact that a lot of people are used to buy or sell stuff on the Internet, it's crucial to know if a certain website can be trusted or if there were problems with other customers in the past. That's why you should check out the color-coded icon for the second component Vendor reliability. If it’s red, then you can expect shipment problems and fraud. One of the major Internet issues that affect us all is represented by spam emails, which may have as cause the fact that we give away our email address to unknown people and websites. So, in order to know if the site owner can be trusted before sending him/her your email address, check out its reputation at Privacy component. As always, red means stay away and do not send your data.
Child education is a major concern in everyone's life and that’s why you need to be really careful when your child is surfing the Web. When search results from different search-engines are displayed, even if they’re green, you still have to be careful when accessing a website because, if you hover the mouse pointer over the links you will see that there are only green icons except for the last one: Child Safety. The last component indicates whether or not a certain site contains adult materials or anything that would encourage violence of any kind. So, if you want to access said website anyway, be sure that there is no child around because it may harm him.
As I said before, in order to change WOT’s behavior go to the Change Settings. Besides the protection level you can also choose which reputation component you want to see, by going to Ratings after you click on Settings. You can also choose on which search engine Web of Trust will display its rating symbol if you click on Searching.
The Good
WOT is not just a simple extension, it is an entire community that works non-stop to create the most accurate opinion about any website from the web, and it allows you to be a small part of it. The reputation component gives you a realistic clue about what awaits you if you access a certain website.
The Bad
Even though its database covers over 20 million websites and it's getting bigger, WOT needs to create a better system to verify the objectivity of the community members because some comments do not reflect the reality. Everyone needs to use default criteria when they express their opinion.
The Truth
Overall, WOT brings something new in this field of Internet security and parental control and, despite the fact that it is just a simple extension for Firefox or Internet Explorer, it does a great job. It can be improved and hopefully it will be.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
