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Are you addicted to the Internet?

Internet addiction is defined by Dr. Jerald Block, as a common compulsive-impulsive disorder that involves online and/or offline computer usage and consists of at least three subtypes:

• excessive gaming
• sexual preoccupations
• email/text messaging

 These three subtypes share these characteristics:

1. excessive use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives
2. withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible
3. tolerance, including the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use
4. negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation, and fatigue

Take this Internet addiction test to see if you exhibit any of the symptoms, and then maybe take a walk outside and think about the results.

Make sure you vote in our current poll about Internet addiction.

WOT Services Oy, which owns and develops Web of Trust, is now looking for a

WEB DEVELOPER

You will participate actively and independently to our development work as a member of our innovative development team. We expect you to have a relevant university level degree and at least 3 years working experience on web/software development with strong skills in PHP, MySQL, Linux, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. You will score additional points with any of the following: Drupal, Windows or Perl programming, IE or Google Chrome development.

Please send your freeform application as soon as possible, latest by September 11th, 2009 to: jobs@mymot.com

Web of Trust (WOT) is a free Internet security add-on for Firefox and IE that warns you about online scams and risky websites that try to deliver malware or send spam.  The WOT add-on has been downloaded over 6 million times and is in use all over the world. www.mywot.com

Fans searching for photos and videos of celebrity favorite Jessica Biel have a one in five chance of landing at a site that’s tested positive for online threats, such as spyware, adware, spam, phishing, viruses and other malware, according to a new report from security company McAfee. Celebrity searches rounding out the top five most dangerous are Beyoncé, Jennifer Aniston, Tom Brady and Jessica Simpson.

Our friend Ed Coyne at Angelo PC, did a Google search and twittered us saying, "Google is doing a pretty good job of blocking the junk. When I searched for her, I saw a sea of green circles and only a few yellows."

Stay protected when you search for your favorite celebrities, or anything else, by using WOT as preventive protection. Whether you use Google, Yahoo!, Startpage by Ixquick, Dogpile or any number of other search engines, WOT will show you the reputation rating of the search results, so you will know which sites are safe and which are too risky to visit.

Edit: I just ran across another "most dangerous celebrity" report that warns about searches for Katie Price, formerly known as Jordan, as well as Jude Law, Victoria and David Beckham and Kate Moss. The lesson being, that whichever celebrity is popular at the moment in a given spot is the target for cybercriminals. So wherever you are and whomever you search for, stay safe!

This past Monday the US brought criminal charges against a hacker that allegedly hijacked 130 million credit and debit account numbers in a series of cyberheists. Unfortunately, this indictment will not slow down the occurrences of identity theft.

So far this year the number of computer users affected by malware engineered to steal personal information has risen by 600% compared to the same period in 2008, according to a PandaLabs report. Hackers are using phishing emails and spoof sites as well as social networks and services like Facebook and Twitter to distribute identity-theft malware. Here are some tips to help you from falling victim to identity theft:

• Be suspicious of any unsolicited email requesting personal information
• Don't open or respond to spam
• Whenever you access an online bank, store, etc., always type the URL directly in your browser
• Check that the page offers secure transactions and read the privacy policy
• Never give your personal information to anyone unless you can confirm who they are and why they need it
• Protect your social security number
• Memorize your passwords and PIN numbers
• Security needs to be multi-layered; install and keep antivirus, antispyware and antimalware software up-to-date
• Check the WOT Security Scorecard for ratings

See also Adware, Browser exploits, Malware, Phishing, Spam and Spyware to learn about safety on the Web.

The Web of Trust add-on has members from every country on Earth. Depending on who you ask, that's about 195 countries! So to reflect our truly global community we have changed the look and layout of the WOT homepage.

The globe theme and fresh layout was designed by the creative minds at Zipipop, the cool, young design team behind the "Going for One" Facebook application.

One of our favorite parts is our new map in the WOT in numbers section. This map shows the requests coming to the WOT servers from each continent for the past hour. In this example, 59% of the requests are originating from Europe. Looks like most of North America is still asleep.

Along with our new homepage look comes a change in the name of the company that supports WOT. Against Intuition Inc. has been changed to WOT Services Ltd. to better reflect our brand. Maybe the name WOT Services Ltd. will provoke less puzzled looks and head scratching than our previous name.

We hope you like the fresh new look. Please give us any feedback or ideas on how WOT can continue to improve. We always like to hear from you.

A seemingly simple little addition to WOT will benefit our international community of users by turning the "Tower of Babel" into a "babel fish."

For scorecard comments and postings on the WOT blog and forum written in a different language than the site's language, we now have a "translate" link . All you do is click on the translate link once and it replaces the comment with a translation. Clicking it again restores the original comment. This clever addition uses the Google Translation API.

Many of the great ideas that have been implemented by WOT have come from our users. This one started with g7w on this forum post. Thanks g7w.

Let us know what you think (in any language!).

Summertime at WOT HQ hasn't  been all sunshine and picnics - we have been busy making WOT stronger and more reliable than ever (with a few picnics thrown in for good measure.)

The new Inside MyWOT newsletter has been a couple of months in the making as we prepared to announce our partnership with Panda Security. We are so proud of this collaboration, and hope that you enjoy the added protection that Panda provides to WOT users.

In this issue we also highlight some of our friends who are using WOT badges on their websites and blogs, and thank our fans who have put their film-making talents to work making videos about WOT for YouTube. Ever wonder what WOT looked like last year, or even before that? The Wayback Machine is a fun way to go back in time and see how your favorite websites have changed.

All this and more in the August Inside MyWOT newsletter. Read it now and please share it with a friend.