Web of Trust (WOT) – Crowdsourced web safety
Surfing the web safely can be a tricky business. How do you really know whether a website you visit can be trusted? Antivirus software might keep you covered when it comes to viruses and malware, but dangers such as scams, spam and untrustworthy online stores are becoming more widespread. The most effective way to spot these additional online threats is through millions of human eyes, in other words crowdsourcing
Seeing where the future of the web was going, two post-graduate students at the Tampere University of Technology, Sami Tolvanen and Timo Ala- Kleemola, hit on the idea of the crowdsourced website reputation rating and review tool Web of Trust (WOT) in 2005. They wanted to create a system where people could share their real-life experiences of different sites, so that other users could benefit and find sites they can trust.
WOT works as a free add-on for your Internet browser and crowdsources ratings from a global community of millions of users, who rate and comment on websites based on their personal experiences. WOT is based on a patented system to make sure the ratings are reliable, accurate, and constantly updated. The user ratings are validated with other trusted third party information.
Today, WOT is the world’s leading crowdsourced website reputation service with millions of users all around the world, and has been recommended by PC World, the New York Times, the Kim Komando Show, CNET, and many others.
How do I start using WOT?
First, download the add-on. After downloading the WOT add-on to your Internet browser you will start seeing color-coded icons appear next to website links. These icons represent a site’s reputation and will tell you how much other users trust the website you’re accessing, with green for good, red for bad, and yellow as a warning to be cautious.
To find out more about the technicalities of how WOT works and how to use it, take a tour and check out our frequently asked questions. Welcome to the WOT community!
Contacting WOT
The easiest way to contact WOT is to click on a relevant link in the right-hand column. To talk with other WOT community members, please use our forum.
If you are a site owner and want to claim your site, please visit your My sites page to add your domain.
The company behind WOT is WOT Services Ltd, based in Helsinki, Finland. Our postal address is:
WOT Services Ltd
Iso Roobertinkatu 21 A, 4th floor
00120
Helsinki
Finland
Business ID: 2046987-7, VAT registration number: FI20469877
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WOT carries a Key Flag, issued by the Association for Finnish Work, as a symbol of its Finnish roots. |
