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Benjamin Franklin once wrote, "'In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." These days we can add to the certainty of those two inevitable events with the addition of the annual scams that accompany tax time.

For those of you who haven't heard of this type of scam, it's basically another way to separate a man from his money, or if you want to look at the bigger picture, a way to defraud the federal government. Either way, your wallet suffers. The financial website money-zine has a good article on the latest tax scams you may encounter on the Web.

In February, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued several warnings about cybercrooks that use the IRS name or logo to gain access to consumers’ financial information in order to steal their identity and assets. Read Suspicious e-Mails and Identity Theft so you will know it when you see it.

Our friend Corrine, Microsoft MVP, wrote an article recently for Windows Live that gives you useful tips, especially if you are still using Windows XP. Read Its Income Tax Time – Avoid Tax Fraud to find out what you need to do to secure your computer before using an online tax preparation service.

If you see any tax related scams circulating, please rate accordingly and let the WOT community know here.

You are invited to become a fan of WOT on Facebook.

Those of you who already have a Facebook page; all you have to do is become a fan to view the WOT fan page in its entirety. But to participate fully you must join Facebook. If you do not already have a Facebook profile you will still be able to view photos and basic information (but c'mon, you know you have wanted to jump on the Facebook bandwagon - here's a good reason why.)

Lots of folks make great videos and have blog postings, articles and photos about WOT, web security or general computing tips & tricks, so here's a place to share them. We sure would like to put a face with a user name, so if you want to show us a picture of yourself with your beloved computer, add a photo too.

Become a fan of WOT on Facebook now. Click the badge above or follow this link http://www.facebook.com/weboftrust

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.