| Web of Trust |
| Web of Trust WOT Scam - possibly worse Internet |
| 13th of Mar, 2011 by User479185 |
| This is supposedly a safe browser add-on that will help protect against dangerous or fraudulent websites. Users are supposed to rate sites good or bad. But WOT actively rewards users who specialize in giving negative reports. Some of their top-rated users have done tens of thousands of negative reports, and it is obvious they are not really rating sites accurately. WOT's own statistics show that the overwhelming majority of ratings are negative. The developers of WOT are in the business of selling security seals for websites, so they have a vested interest in making website owners afraid of negative ratings. It is typical for harmless websites to have negative ratings, which cause scary warning messages to pop up in the browser of anyone who has installed with WOT plugin. If the website owners aren't using WOT, they may never even know they have been targeted. At the same time, there are a number of dangerous or fraudulent sites which have no ratings or good ratings from WOT. Overall, the ratings are worthless to consumers and possibly very harmful to people running reputable online businesses. Then, when you realize that this plug-in is worse than useless and uninstall it, it is never really completely uninstalled, but leaves hidden traces behind, in the same way that spyware does. Stay away from this terrible product. |
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I disagree with this complaint so I've provided more details below. Web of Trust is not a scam it is a valuable Internet safety tool. See a review of WOT and similar tools at http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/best-internet-safety-check.htm.
Where I disagree with the complaint:
+ WOT is "a safe browser add-on that will help protect against dangerous or fraudulent websites".
+ WOT "actively rewards users who specialize in giving negative reports" because it focuses is on identifying problems. A website that has no problems can be hacked and the first person to find out is usually a user. If that user reports the problem then there is a good chance that it will be reported to WOT either by another user or by a third-party reporting system.
+ "Some of their top-rated users have done tens of thousands of negative reports" because they batch upload reports from third-party malware databases.
+ It is not true that "It is typical for harmless websites to have negative ratings". It is not typical as teh vast majority of websites are correctly rated. If you're not sure then use a scanning site like www.virustotal.com as an additional check.
+ It is true that once a website is negatively rated it is not easy to get a positive rating. That is as expected. If it is a malicious site it should have to prove it has changed. If the website was hacked without the owner's knowledge then there should be some evidence that the security vulnerabilities have been closed off so it can't happen again.
+ It is not true that "Overall, the ratings are worthless to consumers"
+ It is not true that WOT is spyware. It leaves no active components when uninstalled.
Where I partly agree with the complaint:
+ Harmless websites can get negative ratings, and these ratings can be from malicious users or incorrect assessments by third-party security products. As a user that is not my concern because I'm more concerned about bad sites that are rated good.
+ "there are a number of dangerous or fraudulent sites which have no ratings or good ratings from WOT". WOT tells you if the site is unrated so you can avoid it or check it out using other security services like virustotal.com. A site can become bad overnight if it is hacked so that is why WOT gives weight to the first reports of problems. These reports may indicate a good site gone bad.
+ "The developers of WOT are in the business of selling security seals for websites, so they have a vested interest in making website owners afraid of negative ratings." True, they do make their money from selling security seals and that pays for the free service to us users. The charges are more than I'd personally want to pay.
+ "the ratings are ... possibly very harmful to people running reputable online" businesses" but this is only for a small proportion of all rated websites. But how do you know if a website is "reputable"? WOT is the best tool that I've found for this purpose even if it is not 100% correct. |
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| I absolutely agree that WOT has to be banned or punished for the way they evaluate sites: They create absolutely false comments about the sites and force honest web masters to deal with that crap. |
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Hammer you seem to have an agenda of defending WOT I would suggest that you are on there payroll...
I can vouch from first hand experience that these guys are a scam. Reputable sites that are falsely accused of running harmful products, are not given the chance to have the inaccuracies addressed and corrected by WOT so that the negative SPAM that peculates through this site rules supreme. |
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