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Mail.Ru Group Launches New Browser Featuring Web of Trust Safe-Surfing Technology

Web of Trust (WOT), a community-powered safe-surfing technology that helps web users find reliable websites, announced today that Russia’s biggest Internet company, Mail.Ru Group, has launched a new version of its browser which integrates WOT’s crowd-sourced reputation ratings. The new browser is called “Internet” and is being offered to 60 million users of Mail.Ru’s services.

WOT’s reputation scores protect Mail.Ru’s users from exactly the things that traditional anti-virus software cannot such as sites with questionable content, dubious online stores, unreliable vendors, and potential threats to child safely and privacy. The scores also help guide users toward reliable websites. Companies that currently license WOT’s reputation data include Facebook, GlobalSign, DuckDuckGo and many other global online properties.

“Mail.Ru has been using WOT technology as part of our email services for more than a year, and because our users enjoy the security and peace of mind, we have expanded our partnership with WOT and have integrated their reputation system in our newest browser,” said Andrew Kononykhin Head of digital distribution department at Mail.Ru. “As the largest email provider in Russia and the largest Russian-language Internet company, we have a responsibility to protect our users while they surf the web as well as contribute to the trustworthiness of the web at large by supporting WOT’s crowd-sourced effort.”

With the WOT browser add-on, Mail.Ru’s “Internet” users now see color-coded traffic light icons next to URL links to indicate which websites can be trusted. A green icon indicates a trustworthy site, yellow advises to be cautious, while red indicates a potentially dangerous site. The icons are shown on the address bar, and on external links displayed on search engine results pages and social network sites. The WOT add-on has 40 million downloads and its users have rated 38 million web sites according to their actual experiences – including 2 million websites in Russia. Each month, more than 350,000 new sites are evaluated according to trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety.

“Mail.Ru has been a fantastic partner and we were eager to expand our relationship with the launch of their exciting new browser,” said Markus Suomi, CEO of Web of Trust. “Mail.Ru’s social network is the most popular in Russia and eMarketer projects faster social networking growth in Eastern Europe than in North America. So we expect our relationship with Mail.Ru to be increasingly strategic.”

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About WOT Services

Web of Trust (WOT) is a community-powered browser add-on that helps web users find reliable websites. WOT uses an intuitive traffic-light rating system to help web users stay safe when they search, surf and shop online. Website ratings are crowd-sourced from a fast growing worldwide community of WOT users who have rated the reputation of 38 million websites based on their experiences in terms of trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety. Community ratings are augmented with information from selected technical data services. The WOT add-on works with Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari and is a free download from https://www.mywot.com.

About Mail.Ru Group

Mail.Ru Group (founded in 1998) is a leading Internet company in the high-growth Russian-speaking Internet markets (Russia is today Europe's the largest Internet market measured by number of users, ComScore, September 2011). Mail.Ru Group's sites reach approximately 84 per cent of Russian Internet users on a monthly basis (ComScore, December 2011) and the Company is the world's fifth largest Internet business, based on page views (ComScore, December 2011).

Having the Communitainment (Communications + Entertainment) strategy the Company is moving rapidly to build an integrated communication and entertainment platform. The Company operates two of the three (TNS, December 2011) largest Russian language online social networking sites (Odnoklassniki and Moi Mir (or "My World")). The Company also operates the two largest Instant Messaging ("IM") networks in Russia (Mail.Ru Agent and ICQ), Russia's leading email service and Russia's largest Internet portal Mail.ru (based on daily and monthly unique users, TNS, December 2011), and the Company operates Russia's largest online games platform.

The Company holds strategic minority equity stakes in VKontakte (a 39.99 per cent stake) and Qiwi, formerly OE Investments (21.35 per cent interest). The Company also holds small minority stakes in international Internet companies including Facebook, Zynga and Groupon as well as a number of small venture capital investments in various Internet companies in Russia and Ukraine.

Media Contacts:

WOT :

Rocket Science PR, for WOT

Rich Mullikin, APR

Tel: +1 415 464 8110 x216

Mobile: +1 925 354 7444

Email: rich@rocketscience.com

Mail.Ru:

sputnik@corp.mail.ru

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