ブログ

The day many have been waiting for has arrived - WOT is proud to announce that we now have an open API. Developers can get started by visiting the WOT API page on the WOT wiki. Make sure you carefully read the API Terms of Service.

We look forward to the amazing new things you build for the millions of people in the WOT community. Please share your comments and feedback here.

Members of the WOT community have long been concerned about our livelihood and have occasionally given us suggestions for raising money from the community. Ideas like selling t-shirts and keyrings, advertisements on mywot.com, or collecting donations have been discussed. We considered some of them, but were hesitant to implement any plans.

But recently Mozilla came up with a plan for accepting contributions, so we thought we would give it a try. Mozilla is known for it's mission of promoting choice and innovation on the Internet. With their pilot contribution plan, they are helping to "support a growing ecosystem by providing our users with the opportunity to support their favorite add-on developers." Sounds good to us.

If you would like to help support the future of WOT, then please make your contribution on WOT's Firefox page. The suggested amount is US $10, but we appreciate any amount!

Thank you!

Good news for all you early adopters: You can jump ahead of everyone else and try the first release of the WOT add-on for Google Chrome. This one is for the geeky among us, so if you're game, all you need is a current development version of Chrome and the WOT add-on.

One small difference is where the icon is located. You'll find it in the lower left corner. The rating window opens a bit differently too, but you'll see it. Notice also that the add-on is released under the GNU GPL, so patches are most welcome.

We invite any feedback or suggestions you may have. Enjoy!

Last month we announced that a small group of users would pilot test a new search refinement feature powered by Surf Canyon. This feature has been a success, so we will gradually expand the group so eventually all WOT users will benefit from "WOT Safe Search" refinements when they do a Google search.

When you click on a refinement in Google search results, WOT earns a small amount of revenue. If you would rather not see the search refinement links, you can turn it off by clicking the [x] next to the refinements.

What is Surf Canyon?

Surf Canyon is a search engine assistant that digs up the most relevant information from your search queries, sometimes from deep within the search results (when is the last time you visited page 83?) Once you install the add-on, the search engine results page becomes dynamic and personalized to you. For example, when you click a result, Surf Canyon re-ranks it based on your choices and buries what you don't need.

See our previous blog posting for more information.

Early this week, nearly 10,000 passwords were stolen and posted online by cybercriminals who created a fake Hotmail website identical to the real thing. This phishing scam tricked users into entering their email address and password. Twenty-four hours later a similar list of thousands of Google Gmail, AOL, Yahoo Mail, Comcast and Earthlink accounts were online as well.

How to protect your email account

1. Install WOT WOT protects the top three Internet-based email services - Google Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. WOT checks links embedded in email and warns you of dangerous websites helping you avoid spyware, spam, phishing, identity theft and other Internet fraud, before you risk clicking. Download WOT now.
2. Check the URL before you login
3. Change your password often It's suggested by experts to change your password at least every 90 days.
4. Make your passwords stronger Use a combination of letters, numerals and symbols. WOT users share good suggestions how to do this on a poll about passwords.
5. Use different passwords for social networking sites Cybercrooks can gain access to your accounts with the email address because so many people use the same login credentials. Mix it up.