Although we try to clearly answer all your questions in the add-on Guide and WOT support, we still get a few questions repeatedly.Here are the most asked questions:

Top 10 WOT Question #1

My site has been rated badly by my enemies/competitors/spammers/WOT. Can you review my site and remove the bad ratings?

Your website's reputation rating is based on ratings from our WOT community, which tells you how much other users trust the site. If you disagree with a reputation, it's most likely not because the reputation is being manipulated or there's a conspiracy against the site, but because other people simply don't agree with you. Their experiences may be different from yours.

If you disagree with the rating or comments, we encourage you to do the following things:

• Rate the site and write your own comment on the scorecard. Explain that you are the owner or employee of the company and why your service is good.
• Contact community members through their boards on the profile page and ask them to review or explain their comment and rating. You have to be logged in to do this.
• Open a forum thread and ask our active members to review the site too. The more ratings your site has, the more accurate the reputation rating will be.
• You can also ask your friends and customers to rate the site. In order to rate sites, comment and post on our forum you need the WOT add-on and you have to be registered as a user of WOT

If you suspect unusual activity, please report it.

Top 10 WOT Question #2

False comments on my site's scorecard are ruining my ratings. Can you remove the comments?

Ratings are often confused with comments, probably because comments are so prominently visible on the scorecard. Users can rate websites on the add-on or on each website's scorecard in four rating components. Ratings are private, which means they are not shown to other users. Reputations are computed only from ratings.

If users want to share additional details about their experiences, they can also write comments to scorecards. Comments are purely informational and have no effect on the reputation. We do not remove comments unless they contain spam, profanities or clearly illegal material.

Comments can be voted up or down depending on whether others agree with them. Comment votes only determine the default order of comments on the scorecard, they won't affect the site's reputation. If a site's reputation rating is determined to be controversial, comment voting is disabled to prevent one side from suppressing opposing views by voting them down.

Top 10 WOT Question #3

I've lost my password and forgot my login too, what now?

You can request a one time login link here: http://www.mywot.com/user/password

Top 10 WOT Question #4

How can I change the language in my WOT?

You can change the language in the bottom right corner of www.mywot.com.

Top 10 WOT Question #5

Why can't I see how many people have rated a website?

Unlike it might first seem, the number of ratings won't tell you the reliability of a reputation, and showing it could be misleading to users. It would be trivial for a spammer to rate a site multiple times and thereby make the reputation appear to be reliable, for example. This is why WOT shows you the confidence indicator instead (the small human figures next to each rating symbol.)

The confidence value tells you how reliable the rating system considers the reputation and it's based not only on the quantity of ratings, but also the estimated reliability of the users who rated the site.

Top 10 WOT Question #6

Why is the rating different in an email newsletter link compared to the reputation of the site I'm redirected to?

Sponsored links and links on email newsletters often go through third-party tracking services, which record your click and then redirect you to the advertised website. The add-on shows you the reputation of the website that your browser starts loading when you click the link. Thus it is possible you saw the reputation of a third-party tracking service in your email and not the reputation of the page you were finally redirected to.

Top 10 WOT Question #7

I just rated some sites and my activity score is not updating. When will it update?

Your rating count and activity score are updated once a day. If you don't see any change in 24 hours, let us know. Please remember that you need to synchronize all your computers for all the ratings to be counted.

Top 10 WOT Question #8

I rated a site, so why hasn't the rating changed?

There are several factors to consider:

• Our system computes the reputation for a site only after there are enough user ratings.
• Our system is based on the assumption that not all users are equally reliable. New users are not very reliable but over time their reliability increases and their ratings have more weight than some others. Please see more on our blog post.
• In the case of a parent domain and a subdomain, for example, some of the popular blogging sites, if there aren't enough user ratings for the site, it inherits the reputation of the parent domain. This means that all web pages hosted on a shared web host will also share the same reputation. Once more people rate the subdomain, the parent domain's poor reputation no longer effects it.

If you notice a site that has wrong rating, please first rate it yourself. Then you could write on our forum and ask our regular users to rate it as well.

Top 10 WOT Question #9

I can't see the WOT icons after installing to Internet Explorer. Can you help?

Method 1:

1. In Internet Explorer open Tools, then click Internet Options
2. Click the Advanced tab and
3. Under Browsing check the option Enable third-party browser extensions
4. Click OK

Method 2:

1. In Internet Explorer open Tools, then click Manage Add-ons
2. Choose Enable or Disable Add-ons. Make sure both ”WOT” and ”WOT Helper” are listed and enabled.
3. If they are disabled, then Enable them by clicking on the add-on name at the bottom under Settings
4. if they aren't listed, reinstall the add-on.
5. Click OK

Method 3:

1. In Internet Explorer open View, then click the Toolbars menu
2. If WOT is listed, select it.

If this didn't help, send us a problem report.

Top 10 WOT Question #10

Can WOT work without the toolbar? It takes a whole line in Internet Explorer?

WOT does not work without the WOT toolbar. In Firefox, the WOT toolbar is automatically placed next to the address line and it doesn't take any space from the browsing area. Unfortunately, in IE it is not possible to get the toolbar next to the address line like in Firefox.

Google has invited WOT to participate in Google I/O, their largest developer conference of the year. This year's conference will host 4,000 developers for two days with a focus on the use of open web technologies and Google developer products.

WOT will be a part of the Developer Sandbox, an area of Google I/O that's dedicated to showcasing developers' innovative use of Google technologies. The invitation letter said, "We believe your application, WOT, is a great example of how companies can build compelling extensions for Google Chrome...". Great example. Compelling extension. We like that! And we are so there!

The conference will be May 19-20, 2010 at Moscone West in San Francisco, California. Register for Google I/O 2010 here. If you are attending Google I/O or are in San Francisco around that time, drop us a line. We would love to meet you!

To those of you in the Los Angeles area, be sure to tune in today to KABC - 790 on the AM radio dial to hear me talk about our Web of Trust safe surfing add-on with Jeff Levy, The Digital Doctor.

The show is broadcast every Saturday and Sunday from 3-4pm PST. It will be available online as a live stream and the show will be available thereafter in the form of a podcast.

Did you know that most new mobile phones can read bar codes? The code to the left is called a QR (short for Quick Response) code or 2D barcode. A QR code is a cell phone readable bar code that can store phone numbers, links, email addresses and any kind of text.

If your iPhone or Android phone doesn't have a QR code reader, try the Kaywa reader. On their site, you can also generate your own QR codes.

Now try it yourself. Use your mobile phone to scan this QR code, then send the message to your friends.

(It says: I use the WOT browser add-on for safe surfing, shopping and searching on the web. You can download it free from http://www.mywot.com/download )

Whenever a big event occurs, and you don't get much bigger than the Olympics, cybercriminals take advantage by creating social engineering schemes meant to trick people into downloading malware.

Immediately after the conclusion of the opening ceremony, cybercriminals jumped into action with tweets promising to show Olympic footage, only to deliver a Windows executable file with a Trojan/Downloader. Legitimate looking emails with hidden iFrames embedded in the email, which can leave malicious files on your computer, started making the rounds as well.

Stay safe from these and other attacks by using extra care when clicking on links in social networking sites or email.

When shopping for tickets, travel or souvenirs, place your order from reputable websites. [Hint: Click on the WOT Safe Search refinements at the top of the Google search page for trustworthy links.]

And as always, keep your computers protected with up-to-date antivirus software, the latest browser and patches, and use Web of Trust for safe surfing.

Opera and Safari don’t currently allow browser extensions in the same way as Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome does, and therefore, providing WOT for these environments is not feasible. However, as a response to requests from our users, we have created a WOT bookmarklet that brings at least some of the functionality to the users of these two popular browsers.

If you are using Safari or Opera, you can add the WOT bookmarklet to your browser simply by dragging this link to your bookmarks.

Using the bookmarklet is simple: click the bookmark and it will display a WOT popup on the page, showing ratings for the current site. Another click will hide the popup. This gives you an easy access to WOT reputation data, although you won't be able to give your own ratings.

Opera users, you can also try a user JavaScript written by a WOT-Opera fan (this is a nice update to his original). Visit his blog to get WOT for Opera.

en español

Safari y Opera no permiten actualmente las extensiones del navegador de la misma manera que Firefox e Internet Explorer. Por lo tanto, WOT para estos entornos no es compatible. Sin embargo, como respuesta a las peticiones de nuestros usuarios, hemos creado un marcador automático WOT que reúne al menos una parte de la funcionalidad para quienes hagan uso de los dos navegadores.

Si está usando Opera o Safari, puede añadir el marcador a su navegador facilmente arastrando este enlace a favoritos.

El uso del marcador es facil: Haz click en el marcador y aparecerá un elemento emergente de WOT sobre la página, mostrando las valoraciónes de la misma. Con otro click desparecerá el elemento emergente. De esta manera tiene un acceso facil a la valoración de la página, aunque no pueda valorarla.

на русском

языке На данный момент браузеры Safari и Opera не взаимодействуют с надстройками также хорошо как Firefox и Internet Explorer, поэтому предоставление WOT для них является невозможным. Однако, в качестве ответа на многочисленные запросы, мы создали WOT букмарклет, который предоставляет пользователям Safari и Opera некоторые из функциональных возможностей WOT.

Чтобы добавить WOT букмарклет в свой браузер, просто перетащите эту ссылку в Ваши закладки.

Букмарклет прост в обращении: нажав на него, Вы увидите всплывающее окно WOT, которое отобразит рейтинг данного сайта. Повторное нажатие уберет всплывающее окно. Таким образом Вы получаете лёгкий доступ к информации о репутации того или иного сайта, несмотря на то, что сами не сможете выставлять оценки.

Happy Safer Internet Day! Today marks the seventh edition of the event. Celebrations are taking place in more than 60 countries on all 5 continents across the world, from Canada to South Korea, and Russia to Kenya and including all 27 countries of the European Union.

" Online safety concerns all of us. Young people across Europe spend a good part of their leisure time, playing, interacting and learning on the web. The overall traffic on social networking sites has grown enormously over the last three years," said Viviane Reding, patron of Safer Internet Day for the sixth consecutive year, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media. "Therefore, it is even more our responsibility as Europeans to make the online world a safe and secure environment that everyone can enjoy."

Safer Internet Day 2010 celebrates the theme "Think B4 U Post". Once an image is posted online, it’s hard, if not impossible, to take it back. Anyone can see it. The goal is not to prevent young people from using these sites, but to make them aware of the risks of sharing personal information online and to encourage them to control their online identity by thinking carefully about the consequences.

Visit www.saferinternet.org and look up the website of your national awareness center to get tips on how to protect your privacy online. To learn more about Safer Internet Day meetings in your region or at the international level this year, stay posted at: www.saferinternetday.org and check out the SID fair www.sidfair.org.

About Safer Internet Day

Safer Internet Day is part of a global drive by awareness-raising partners to promote a safer Internet for all users, especially young people. It is organised by INSAFE in the framework of the European Commission’s Safer Internet Programme.

For the first time, About.com's Computing Channel is having a Reader's Choice Awards which honors the best browsers and browser-related software.  During January, thousands of nominations were submitted by readers in a wide variety of categories including Best Privacy/Security add-on. WOT safe browsing tool has qualified as a finalist!

Throughout the month of February, About.com readers will vote for a winner in each category. The categories are: Best Browser Theme, Best Independent Browser, Best Major Desktop Browser, Best Mobile Browser, Best Overall Add-On (Non-Security), Best Privacy/Security Add-On and Best User Script. Winners will be announced March 1.

Please cast your ballot for WOT in the Best Privacy/Security Add-On category and help us to win. As of today, we are trailing NoScript by a mile, so we need your vote. Thanks everybody!

Vote in About.com's Reader's Choice Award