You become a member simply by downloading our free browser addon. It works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. You don't have to register to use the system, but we encourage it because only registered members can access all the features.
Registering lets you use the advanced features of the system, like customizing the protection level and blocking access to dangerous sites to protect your family. Furthermore, registered members can leave comments on the WOT security scorecard, participate in the forum, leave support requests, participate in competitions, and access the My Profile page. The My Profile page lets you see your own ratings, comments and activity score, delete ratings and message other users.
Your privacy is very important to us. The WOT software collects information only for computing website ratings, performing statistical analysis, and preventing abuse of our service. Any information that is no longer needed for these purposes is deleted. When loading reputations for the websites you visit, the software sends our service only the encrypted hostname and any ratings you may choose to give. The information about domains visited is stored only temporarily for computing ratings. Your IP address is never stored in our database.
If you choose to register with the My WOT portal, we request some personal information. We ask for your name, your email address, and a password (which you can choose yourself). This information is stored in a secure database and will not be disclosed to third parties. Read the details in our Privacy Policy.
You'll need to have cookies enabled in your browser. Also, make sure the option "Log in automatically to mywot.com and enable features that require the addon" is selected on the Advanced page of WOT settings. You can access the settings by clicking Settings on the rating window. Don't forget to press the "Apply" button if you make changes! If the problem persists, please contact our support.
There is a possibility the add-on isn't working properly because of a conflict in the profile. Try creating a new Firefox profile and installing WOT there to see if that helps. If the add-on works with the fresh profile, something in your current profile might be causing the problem.
The addon uses cookies to authenticate itself to the My WOT portal. The cookies don't store any personally identifying information, such as your name or email address. You can disable the cookies from the addon preferences if you prefer. Please understand, though, that if cookies are turned off, you may not be able to use certain parts of the WOT services or certain functions and features that are part of the WOT software.
First you need to download our free software. Then you open your Firefox or Internet Explorer browser. You can now see the WOT icon in your browser's navigation toolbar, next to the address bar. Go to the site that you want to rate and click the WOT icon. This will open a rating window. Move the mouse over the colored indicator bars and click, and a rating symbol appears on the screen. Click the Guide link in the rating window for more details, or watch a screencam presentation on how to rate websites.
First you need to register as a WOT user. This gives you access to the Profile Page (click your user name at the top right to get there fast.) To view your ratings, select the My Ratings tab. You can delete a rating by clicking on the red X.
To edit a rating, open the site's scorecard and click "Edit my rating" in the reputation rating area. When you have made the changes, click save.
While our primary source of knowledge is ratings from our users, we also take advantage of hundreds of carefully chosen trusted sources, such as listings of phishing sites from PhishTank. This provides WOT with a fast, automated, and reliable means of protecting our users from new, rapidly spreading online threats.
The reliability of the reputations improves as the system gathers more supporting evidence in the form of users’ ratings and information from trusted sources. The rating window shows an icon composed of tiny human figures indicating the amount of supporting evidence: one figure represents the smallest amount of confidence, five the greatest. A minimum confidence level means that we have only a little evidence and we encourage you to give your rating to improve the reliability.
In order to keep ratings more reliable, WOT tracks each user's rating behavior before deciding how much it trusts the user. WOT applies sophisticated algorithms to detect and eliminate any manipulation of reputation. If a user bases their ratings on how pretty the site is or what's the phase of the moon, her ratings won't be trusted. You must prove yourself before we take you seriously. The system will ignore all ratings created by a user attempting to manipulate the reputation data.
If you disagree with a site's reputation, you should always give your own rating and ask your friends and customers to rate it. The best ways to influence a site's rating is to keep your customers happy, display a privacy policy and contact information, be clear about the methods used to collect data and be careful not to use any methods that people might think are spyware, etc. If you want to report an incorrect inclusion on a blacklist, then please notify us and we will investigate.
Subdomains are often used with free hosting and social networking sites, for example. The WOT community can rate subdomains in exactly the same way as the members rate other domains. If WOT doesn’t have enough ratings for a specific subdomain, the subdomain inherits the parent domain's reputation. Once the system considers there to be enough supporting evidence to calculate a separate reputation for the subdomain, WOT will start to use it.
Similarly, the reputation of each subdomain contributes to the parent domain's reputation. If a domain has lots of untrustworthy subdomains, its reputation will suffer, and, therefore, the reputation of any new subdomains will suffer as well. We designed this logic within the WOT system to model the way trust works in real life.
Just as the name suggests, an activity score is an indicator of how active you have been. It is calculated by combining information from how many sites you have rated, postings you have made on the forum or blog, invitations you have sent and shared ratings. It is not how much our system trusts your ratings, merely an indicator of your overall participation with WOT.
WOT supports Mozilla Firefox 1.5 or later on all platforms, and Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and 7 under Windows.
If you are using Safari or Opera, you can add the WOT bookmarklet.
No, it doesn’t. The amount of data transferred has been minimized, and the backend systems are optimized to provide the rating information in a flash. The rating information is retrieved in parallel with the Web page, and you won’t notice any difference.
Just click on the rating icon with your right mouse button and click on the "Enabled" option in the pop-up menu. The addon is now turned off and no information is transferred to our servers. When the addon is disabled, the rating icon is gray and has a blue "pause" symbol. You can enable the addon from the rating window or from the pop-up menu where you disabled it.
The addon automatically logs you in when you visit our website. If you prefer to log in manually (and be able to log out), you can disable the automatic login feature from the addon:
Next time when you login to the portal using the password there will be a log out button on the top of the page.
You can get the same ratings on both computers. To do this, you need to become a member of the WOT community. After you have registered from one of your computers, you can then log in to your WOT account from your other computer. When you do this, you'll get a message telling you how you can synchronize your profile. This synchronization will enable you to see your ratings from both computers. If you want to perform the synchronization later, you can find this option on the "My page". The feature is visible only if synchronization can be done.
WOT for Firefox can be uninstalled like any other extension. For example, in the Windows version you go to the Tools menu and select "Extensions." In the Extensions window, look up WOT and click "Uninstall." Restart your browser and the job is done.
You can uninstall WOT for Internet Explorer from the Windows Control Panel option Add/Remove Programs just like any other Windows program. Remember to close all Internet Explorer windows before uninstalling.