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We have released an update for the add-on, which adds new features you have requested and fixes some minor problems. Please keep the suggestions coming, we appreciate your feedback!

Here are the notable changes compared to WOT 20061107:

• New feature: adds an option to block access to dangerous sites instead of merely showing a warning

• New feature: the creation of authentication cookies is now configurable (all features on mywot.com will not be available if disabled)

• Bug fixes: now includes small icons for the toolbar indicator and fixes a problem with a missing icon

Version 20061129 is now available for download from our website.

(Visit Mozilla Add-ons for previous versions and a more detailed version history of the WOT add-on.)

A user recently commented on Mozilla Add-ons that WOT is great, because it can be used to create a blacklist of our own. He's right, it can. This is also how the basic phishing protection on your browser works. Your browser has a blacklist of malicious websites, which it updates every now and then. If you come across a website on the list, it will warn you. However, WOT is more than that, it also gives you the benefits of a whitelist.

Unlike a blacklist, a whitelist contains websites that are known to be good. In addition to warning you of bad sites, WOT also provides you with a positive indication if the website you are visiting has a good reputation. This is just as important as a warning. Because no blacklist is ever complete, having a whitelist to back it up makes the whole system more reliable. If WOT doesn't suddenly know your bank's website, it's a sign that something is wrong, even if the blacklist on your browser hasn't yet been updated to notice the scam.

More than a whitelist

The problem with whitelists has traditionally been that there are just too many websites. No single authority is capable of judging whether the sites are trustworthy. This results either in poor coverage or an unreliable whitelist. WOT solves this problem by letting you, our users, set the reputations. No single entity can know all websites, but in a large user community, there is a good chance that some people have prior experience with any single website.

However, WOT is not just a combination of a blacklist and a whitelist either. WOT reputations are on a linear scale. A simple binary system is not sufficient when measuring trust, because not all websites are entirely evil or completely trustworthy. With WOT, the world is not just black or white.

Have you ever wanted to know a website's reputation without visiting it? Now you can. The Ask WOT service shows you the same reputation estimates you can find on the WOT add-on for any website. Just type in a domain name and hit enter.

Ask WOT also serves as a testbed for the simple WOT API we hope to publish and document shortly. However, we do have plans to expand it to include more information later. In the mean while, give it a try.

As always, let us know what you think!

UPDATE: Ask WOT is also now available on the My WOT page. Thank you for taking the time to test it.

WOT collects data from hundreds of information sources in addition to user testimonies in order to quickly respond to emerging threats. Today, we are happy to announce that WOT now includes data from PhishTank when computing website reputations.

PhishTank is a collaborative clearing house for data and information about phishing on the Internet. Started in October 2006, it already provides information for thousands of phishing sites, each verified by an active user community.

We would like to thank OpenDNS and the people at PhishTank for their contribution to web safety. The data from PhishTank is a valuable addition to WOT and we believe it will help protect our users better by improving our response time and coverage of new phishing incidents. WOT currently knows nearly 11 million websites, with approximately 6% of them considered untrustworthy.

Check out the PhishTank blog for further information.

Sharing your opinion is not obligatory. You can use WOT without ever testifying. So why should you? Because there are certain benefits to gain by testifying.

First of all, you can help other people by sharing your knowledge. The more testimonies we have for a website, the more accurate the reputation will be. Your testimonies can help other people trust the web more. But that's not all, you can also directly benefit from testifying yourself.

Personal reputations are available only after you have given a certain number of testimonies. Learning what you trust makes it possible for our system to fine-tune the reputations shown in your add-on to more closely match your trust model. At the same time, the more you testify, the more we can trust you. When we trust you more, your testimonies will weigh more and thus you have more influence to the reputations.

How should I testify?

As you remember, trust is subjective, and so are the testimonies. All opinions are equally good. There are no bad testimonies, only bad reputations. Therefore, if you have an opinion on a website, it is highly recommended to share it. If you later feel that your testimony was incorrect, then you can and should change it. This way, your previous testimony will be overwritten by the new one.

Testifying itself is very simple. In our help section, we have a Flash tutorial where a user testifies for the Wikipedia website. If you don't currently have Flash installed, we recommend you to download it from Adobe's website. (If you don't much care for Flash in general, we also recommend the Flashblock add-on). A simplified version of the tutorial is also available as an animation for those without Flash installed.

Basically, testifying is just about as easy as it gets. Click on one of the reputation bars and that's it. Your testimony is stored when you close the window. There's nothing more to it.

The linear scale of the bar without explanations might feel a little odd the first time. However, once you get used to it, it is very handy. You don't have to testify in all of the categories. However, if you accidentally testify in a category on which you absolutely have no opinion, we recommend you set the testimony to match the current reputation. If there is none, then somewhere in the middle of the reputation bar would be the best option.

We have released an update for the WOT add-on, which adds two new features you have requested. Please keep the suggestions coming, we appreciate your feedback!

Here are the notable changes compared to WOT 20061014:

• New feature: added an optional information popup to embedded reputation indicators, showing more detailed reputations for the link target.

• New feature: the creation of the toolbar indicator is now configurable, in case you want to remove it completely.

Version 20061107 is now available for download from our website.

(Visit Mozilla Addons for previous versions and a more detailed version history of the WOT add-on.)

UPDATE: Version 20061107 fixes a minor conflict with the NoScript extension.