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Best Free Internet Safety Check

 
In a Hurry?
 
  Go straight to the Quick Selection Guide for short detailed summaries of each product.
  Go straight to the Quick Decision Guide for what runs with your browser & operating system.

  Go straight to the Change Log to see what's new since the major update in June 2011.

  Go straight to the Supplement for the complete list of products and further analysis.

Introduction

In the past I've relied on parental filters and anti-virus software. Well, now that I've been forced to use these safety checks, I've find that they are very useful. I sure like checking on a website before I risk browsing it. Even though it doesn't replace any of my existing security measures - except perhaps the parental filter - this additional layer of security is real useful.

Rating and scanning
The two types of safety check for a web address or URL are rating and scanning. Scan the website for threats (right now when I need it) or rate the reputation of the website using other sources of information: what people think of it, whether it has been associated with any dishonest or illegal activity, and what other security databases have on record which can include the results of your past scans.

Safety checks are easy to install and use
These products are easy to install and use because there are few options to configure. Most run in the background while you browse the Web and only pop-up when they identify a problem. The products mainly install as a browser add-on for each supported web browser. Just be warned that browsing can be noticeably slower and will usually crawl on a dial-up connection or if you run several products at the same time. Often there is a single button added to the toolbar (as with WOT) and sometimes an entire new toolbar (as with LinkExtend).

Online safety checks are an alternative
If you don't want to install more software on your computer then you can use an online service. You manually check websites by typing or copying the web address into the online check website. They are less convenient but are an effective option particularly to get a second opinion. I've included the best in this article but the remainder can be found in the full list of products reviewed.

Web browsers have built-in safety checks
Many of you will realize that you are already using an internet safety rating as a feature of your web browser. For example, Microsoft calls it SmartFilter for Internet Explorer, and Firefox has options to block "reported attack sites" and "reported web forgeries".  Apart from Internet Explorer, the main web browsers source their safety data from other vendors: Firefox, Chrome and Safari use data from Google Safe Browsing; and Opera relies on AVG. I tested them in the same way as the other products and services. In terms of detecting bad websites they were in the middle third of the products I reviewed.

Color-coded results
Typically, the products present their results with color-coded symbols as shown in the image from Web of Trust (WOT). The WOT scorecard uses rating symbols that have five levels of color from dark green for trustworthy, yellow for concern, and orange to red for dangerous. Grey is used for unrated sites. Most programs work in a similar way, placing an icon beside web links so that moving the mouse over the icon will display the rating; and clicking on the icon or pop-up displays the full scorecard. Online meta-scanners, which use the results of many different scans, are the main exception.WOT rating symbols Although many use similar colors their rating is usually the fraction of the tests for problems found e.g. 9 of 15, 9/15.

Criteria for this review
I've rated these products by looking at six criteria:

  • Ratings that are reliable with more information close at hand.
  • Scanning that doesn't slow me down too much.
  • Warning about and blocking of risky sites.
  • Searching options including icons that link to the full rating.
  • Compatibility and integration with the web browsers and operating systems.
  • Detecting web pages and sites that have active or reported threats

 

Discussion

Installed software

WOT (Web of Trust)    Rating 8 of 10  Gizmo's Top Pick      installed rater 

Web of Trust warning pop-up

WOT (Web of Trust) from WOT Services is the Editor's Choice because it leads in many areas: compatibility and integration with seamless operation; flexible options; searching; warning and blocking; and user input. It only loses in areas that it doesn't compete in: meta-rating (combining the results from several raters as in Link Extend) and scanning.

WOT is the best implemented and the best documented rater - you can even view the source code. It is also the most heavily criticized. For these reasons I'm using it to discuss many of the features that can be found in raters.

Rating scorecards
The WOT scorecard shows ratings for four WOT Rating Categories. Don't confuse these with the sixteen Community (user) comment categories. The comment categories do not affect the ratings. It's a shame that many critics of WOT do not realize this.

  1. Trustworthiness - WOT calculates this with information from trusted sources and user feedback.
  2. Vendor Reliability - Does this website provide a positive shopping experience? What's the product or service like? Is the information factual or fabricated?
  3. Privacy - Can the website be trusted with your personally identifiable information? Does it produce spam or phishing schemes?
  4. Child Safety - Is the website safe for young children? Does it have material (e.g. pornography), games (e.g. age-restricted games), multimedia (e.g. music with explicit lyrics), or forums (e.g. political or religious viewpoints) that is better reserved for adults?

Warning and blocking
WOT is very good at warning and blocking. You decide how to handle each of the four rating categories. Specify the level of danger you are prepared to accept - red, orange, or yellow - and then whether you want a warning or a block. You can also include unrated sites if you don't want them to slip through by default. WOT's block screen will redirect you to WOT or open in a new tab, but will not take you to a risky site unless you specifically chose to ignore the warning. It's up to you which step you take next:

  • Ignore the WOT warning and go to the website;
  • Rate the site if you disagree with WOT's rating;
  • View rating details and comments about the website;
  • Use your browser to take some other action: surf to a different website, close the tabbed window, go back, use a bookmark, etc.

Searching
Like most raters, WOT has a safe search option. It's provided by Surf Canyon based on Bing. WOT also has more search options to choose from. You can select the rating you want to see in the search results: the default "optimized" rating, the lowest rating, or the trustworthiness rating by itself. WOT ratings also appear for more search engines and other services than any other product:

  • English search engines: AOL, Ask, Bing, Google, Yahoo!
  • Non-english search engines: China - Baidu; Czech - Seznam, WebHledani; Korea -  Naver;  Russia - Rambler, Yandex;
  • Metasearch engines and reference: Dogpile, Inquick, Search, Wikipedia
  • Social networks and messaging: Facebook, Gmail, Mail Ru, Twitter, Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail

User ratings
WOT has a comprehensive set of sixteen categories for user ratings and comments. When I collated these categories for all the programs I reviewed, I found that WOT covers all of them except three. As is expected, the majority of ten cater for negative ratings, there are five for positive ratings, and one for neutral comments.
 

McAfee SiteAdvisor   Rating 6 of 10   installed rater

McAfee SiteAdvisorI found McAfee Site Advisor to be solid but unexceptional. It falls well short of WOT in its features, ratings, and safety. It just didn't warn me about enough bad websites which is surprising because the online check at McAfee Threat Intelligence does. Despite its average performance in detecting threats, it did find problems such as browser exploits that WOT was not aware of. I also like using the website report which includes a list of downloads and a diagram of linked sites.

Like WOT, it supports all the main english-speaking search engines.plus several foreign-language portals. But compared with WOT, it runs on fewer systems and web browsers. It was slower. In most areas it has has fewer features. Some things I wanted (e.g. email and IM link scanning) require an upgrade to the paid version, SiteAdvisor Live. User ratings and comments are less useful and appear to be totally ignored for rating purposes anyway.  I couldn't even challenge errors of fact that other users had made. A small irritation in search results is that it's icon was obscured by the Web Security Guard icon and itself obscured other icons (M86 Secure Browsing, Norton Safe Web).

If you already use McAfee products then there will be some synergy such as using your existing registration. SiteAdvisor is also one part of McAfee Web Security which also provides the SECURE trustmark and SECURE shopping for websites. I think that it suffers from being the least important part which is a problem common to several of these products that have commercial products for sale.
 

AVG LinkScanner    Rating 5 of 10      installed scanner

I have ranked AVG LinkScanner third because a scanner is useful if you don't have anti-virus on your computer that checks website links. Even though it was not very good at detecting threats it did detect and disarm threats from websites that the raters said were OK. This is the advantage of scanners.

LinkScanner is a well organized package. It looks like other AVG programs, installs in a similar manner, and is presented in the same modular manner. That's because it is assembled from some modules of AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition: LinkScanner, Security Toolbar, and Update Manager. So if you're using AVG Anti-Virus then you do not need need AVG LinkScanner. Two further modules, parental controls and online backup, are indicated as installable but are not free.

The LinkScanner module has two protective components:

  1. Surf-Shield checks websites for threats and runs independently of the browser. Scanners always slow you down but if they are based on anti-virus technology they will usually work with any browser. That's why Surf-Shield will still be working even if you switch off the browser add-ons. If you have a compatibility problem with other anti-virus software then turning off Surf-Shield will allow you to confirm this without uninstalling the whole program.
  2. Search-Shield gets ratings for any website address and inserts the safety ratings into your search results. It also runs as, or is linked with, the add-on called Safe Search. Search-Shield works with Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari but not Opera.

The AVG Security Toolbar is an add-on so it can be disabled but you will lose easy access to the LinkScanner options, AVG Secure Search, and the Page Status for the current web page. Incidentally, you can also check any website address by clicking on the AVG LinkScanner component within AVG LinkScanner in the system tray.
 

LinkExtend    Rating 4 of 10    installed meta-rater

Linkular's LinkExtendLinkExtend is the best installed meta-rater and it has an excellent reputation with users. But it really only works well with Firefox. The versions for Internet Explorer and Chrome force you to check the ratings manually by going to the sources. In addition, the Chrome version won't give ratings on search lists.

LinkExtend uses several other products for its safety rating: WOT, SiteAdvisor, Safe Web, Google Safe Browsing, Browser Defender, and Web Security Guard.. Just be careful, WOT can identify a bad site with active threats but LinkExtend's weighting algorithm does not always give it a bad safety rating. It also provides ratings for child safety and company ethics, and a lot of other information about a website's popularity, web traffic, age, my last visit, etc. As a result it has the busiest and largest toolbar in your browser. LinkExtend also has extensive options: the services to be used for each rating; what appears on the toolbar; what appears on the context menu; etc.

If you like quick access to a lot of information then LinkExtend is attractive. Just remember that it doesn't put up warning or block screens in Firefox and Internet Explorer. It does put up a warning in Chrome but well after the page has already loaded. It only provides ratings for result lists from two search engines: Google and Yahoo!. It is slow and seems to be slowest in Chrome. You will be able to see the website rating change as it checks with each source. As a meta-rater, it is only as good as the best rating it is given. More often than not, you won't know which one you should trust. You will probably need more information to compare the differing ratings so you will discover that you will have to go to each rater's website. That takes too long. For me, that has meant LinkExtend is only a distraction where I find myself saying "Oh, that is interesting!" or "I wonder why ...?".  I decided to disable it temporarily only to discover that LinkExtend keeps re-enabling itself.
 

TrendProtect    Rating 4 of 10     installed rater

I have included Trend Micro's  TrendProtect for one important reason. Those using Internet Explorer 6 or 7 need all the help they can get to keep safe. If Trend Micro developed it to work with all the browsers I would rate it much more highly. It correctly rates many bad websites but leaves too many good sites unrated. It also needs to work with more than just Google and Yahoo! searches. It was unusual because it uses content categories in a similar way to parental filters but without doing any blocking. So it not only warns about websites with poor ratings but also warns you if your safe website is in one of the categories you selected.

 

Online services

These online safety checks are less convenient but very useful.
 

VirusTotal    Rating 4 of 10     online meta-rater/scanner + add-ons

VirusTotal has browser add-ons VTZilla and VTChromizer for Firefox and Chrome respectively. They put a shortcut to VirusTotal on the context menu for any web link so you can start the rating and scanning from there rather than having to go to the VirusTotal website.

VirusTotal checks websites against 13 rating services and blacklists. It also scans with 42 anti-virus engines. This battery of tests is its strength. Its weakness is that the reporting takes too long (minutes instead of seconds) when compared with the installed raters and scanners. But being web-based it will run with every browser. You can rate websites with comments in any of one positive category (benign) and five negative categories (browser exploit, malicious. malware download, phishing site, spam link). If you sign-up your ratings carry more weight than anonymous ratings. As is usual with many of these scanners, you are given the anti-virus scanner name, version, last update date and, most importantly, the result of the scan.
 

Trend Micro Site Safety    Rating 4 of 10     online rater

Trend Micro Site Safety gives a simple rating with the category of threat. It has equivalent accuracy to the other Trend Micro products so it is very good. If it had an installable version that would be recommended as a top product. I know that there is TrendProtect but it only works with Internet Explorer. While Web Protection Add-on works for all browsers it is only trial software.
 

URLVoid    Rating 4 of 10     online rater

URLVoid from NoVirusThanks Company is very similar to VirusTotal. It uses 17 rating services and blacklists but only 6 anti-virus scanners which makes it less effective. The rating and scanning are initiated separately so it is also less convenient. It is easier to see if there is a problem because  results are color-coded: green for Clean, yellow for Suspicious, red for Dangerous/Infected, and gray for Unrated. URLVoid's website is a beta version but I had no problems and anyway it is less risky for my computer configuration than the installable betas like TrafficLight and Browser Guard.

Many online checkers have a lot of other tools. URLVoid has more than most: scan a file, scan an IP address, analyze a website for other issues, download a website's code without browsing it, unshorten URLs, etc.
 

McAfee Threat Intelligence    Rating 4 of 10     online rater

You can search the McAfee's Threat Intelligence threat library for a URL or use one of the other categories including IP address, DNS server, malware name or the name of the vulnerability. In my tests it was nearly twice as effective as McAfee Site Advisor in identifying websites with active threats.

 

Related Products and Links

General Security Advice

Resident Security Products

On-Demand Antimalware Products

Safe Practices

Quick Decision Guide

These three questions will help you to get a shortlist of the products that might best suit you.
Note that online services are in italic.

What operating system do you use?
Windows
XP/Vista/7
 Windows
2000
Mac
OS X
Linux Other
See the next question WOT (for Firefox or Internet Explorer);
TrendProtect (for Internet Explorer);
online services
 

 WOT;
McAfee SiteAdvisor (for Firefox);
online services

 WOT;
online services

WOT or other bookmarklet;
online services
What Windows web browser do you use?
Mozilla Firefox Internet Explorer Google Chrome Apple Safari Opera

 WOT 64 Bit version available;
McAfee SiteAdvisor
(64 Bit version available Windows 7);
AVG LinkScanner64 Bit version available
VirusTotal VTZilla;
LinkExtend
online services
 

 WOT;
McAfee SiteAdvisor
(64 Bit version available Windows 7);
TrendProtect;
AVG LinkScanner64 Bit version available
online services

WOT 64 Bit version available;
McAfee SiteAdvisor
(64 Bit version available Windows 7);
AVG LinkScanner64 Bit version available
VirusTotal VTChrominizer;
online services

WOT 64 Bit version available;
AVG LinkScanner64 Bit version available
VirusTotal;
online services
WOT 64 Bit version available;
AVG LinkScanner64 Bit version available
VirusTotal;
online services
How well do you want to be warned about web sites with active threats?

Best

Above Average

Average

Below Average

Worst

 Trend Micro Site Safety;
TrendProtect;
VirusTotal;
WOT;
McAfee Threat Intelligence;
URLVoid

Stopbadware.com

BrightCloud;
GData;
Comodo Site Inspector;
Webutation;
TrafficLight
AVG LinkScanner;
Scumware;
Sucuri;
McAfee SiteAdvisor;
LinkExtend

Malware Blacklist; MalcOde;
Browser Defender;
Norton Safe Web;
MalwareURL;
WebSense;
AVG Threat Labs;
Web Security Guard

 

 

Unmask Parasites;
M86 Secure Browsing;
Online Link Scan;
Explabs;
BitDefender Anti-Phishing;
etc.

 

 Mozilla Firefox
Google Chrome

Apple Safari

Opera
Internet Explorer

 

Quick Selection Guide

WOT (Web of Trust)
8
 
Gizmo's Freeware award as the best product in its class!

Combines a web service with a stand-alone program
fast; highly compatible but works best in Firefox; works with the most search engines and even Google image search; 17 categories of user comment; excellent warning and blocking; child safety rating; excellent documentation
less functionality in browsers other than Firefox; slow on image search results
http://www.mywot.com
1.02
0.4 to 1.2 MB
32 and 64 bit versions available
Open source freeware
There is no portable version of this product available.
Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7; Mac OS X; Linux

Downloads are specific to the following browsers:
Firefox 3.0+ http://www.mywot.com/en/download/ff
File Size 0.7 MB Installation Requirements Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7 64 Bit version available; Mac OS X; Linux
Internet Explorer 6.0+:http://www.mywot.com/en/download/ie
File Size 1.2 MB Installation Requirements Windows 2000 (limited) Windows XP, Vista, 7 64 Bit version available
Chrome 4+:http://www.mywot.com/en/download/chrome
File Size ?? MB Installation Requirements Windows XP, Vista, 7 64 Bit version available; Mac OS X; Linux
Safari 5+ http://www.mywot.com/en/download/safari
File Size 1.1 MB Installation Requirements Windows XP, Vista, 7 64 Bit version available; Mac OS X; Linux
Opera 11+ http://www.mywot.com/en/download/opera
File Size 0.4 MB Installation Requirements Windows XP, Vista, 7 64 Bit version available; Mac OS X; Linux
A bookmarklet is available for any other browser: http://www.mywot.com/en/download/others

Further Resources:
About, FAQs, Tutorials, Support, Forums, Wiki, Statistics, Source code, For site owners 

McAfee SiteAdvisor
6
 
Combines a web service with a stand-alone program
works with many search engines; good site report; generally fast; McAfee crawl the web scanning sites
no blocking; limited user ratings
http://www.siteadvisor.com
3.3.1
6.7 MB
32 bit but 64 bit compatible
Feature limited freeware
There is no portable version of this product available.
Windows XP, Vista, 7 - Firefox 3.0+, Internet Explorer 6.x-8.x, Chrome 5+; Mac OS X - Firefox 3.0+

The main download link is for Windows. Other download versions are:
Apple OS X download

Resources:
About, Features, Support, For site owners

LinkExtend
5
 
Combines a web service with a stand-alone program
combines other free rating sources; provides a lot more information; works with Google and Yahoo! search
Firefox and Chrome only for automated rating, Internet Explorer requires visits to each website; only two search engines; no warning or block screens; no link to detailed information so you will have to go to each rating source
http://www.linkextend.com
http://www.linkextend.com
6.3.2.0
1-1.6 MB (15 MB install)
32 bit only
Unrestricted freeware
There is no portable version of this product available.
Windows XP, Vista, 7

Downloads are browser specific:
Firefox and Internet Explorer http://www.linkextend.com
Chrome https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/aggcabjbgijmbbckmkjkaadcjinelmdp

Resources:
About, Support

AVG LinkScanner
5
 
Combines a web service with a stand-alone program
for Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Opera browsers; cut-down version of AVG Anti-Virus; scanning websites works with all browsers even if there is no add-on
scanning searches don't work with Opera
http://linkscanner.avg.com
10.0.0.1324
5.2 MB (111 MB install)
32 bit but 64 bit compatible
Free for private use only
There is no portable version of this product available.
Windows XP, Vista, 7; Mac OS X

Resources: About, FAQs, Forums, Manual

TrendProtect
4
 
Combines a web service with a stand-alone program
for Internet Explorer; good detection rates
only Internet Explorer 6.x or 7.x
1.2
2.5 MB
Free for private use only
There is no portable version of this product available.
Windows 2000 SP4, XP, Vista, 7
Trend Micro Site Safety
4
 
Is a web service or web application
works with any browser; good threat detection; quick response; also categorizes sites
online service (but TrendProtect for IE is an option)
Unrestricted freeware
Windows; Mac OS X; Linux
VirusTotal
4
 
Is a web service or web application
online service works with any browser; high accuracy; rates and scans in one check; 42 scanners; 13 raters; installable versions for Firefox and Chrome
slow reporting for scans; browser add-ons do very little
http://www.virustotal.com
Windows; Mac OS X; Linux

Browser add-ons (both unrestricted freeware File Size 16 KB Installation Requirements Windows XP, Vista, 7):
VTZilla for Firefox: http://www.virustotal.com/advanced.htmll
VTChromizer for Chrome https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/efbjojhplkelaegfbieplglfidafgoka

Resources:
About, FAQ, Statistics

URLVoid
4
 
Is a web service or web application
works with any browser; 17 raters; 5 scanners; other tools e.g. IPVoid.com for IP addresses
online service; separate checks for rating and scanning
http://www.urlvoid.com
Windows; Mac OS X; Linux
McAfee Threat Intelligence
4
 
Is a web service or web application
effective rater; search database for IP address, DNS server, malware name, vulnerability name, etc
online service
Windows; Mac OS X; Linux

 

Editor

This software category is maintained by volunteer editor Remah.

  "I've used TechSupportAlert and the older Support Alert Newsletter for almost a decade so I have saved hundreds of hours of work and many more dollars by following Gizmo's Freeware recommendations. Thanks for the opportunity to give something back."  

If you have had a similar experience then you should consider becoming a reviewer too.

Change Log

Date

Change

Editor

October 2011 Converted QSG to the new database and format. Remah
August 2011 Corrected links. Remah
July 2011 Clarify WOT user ratings and comments. Remah

June 2011

Rewrite to organize the products into raters and scanners.
Create a Supplement to extend the discussion.
Add many online raters and scanners.
Move child-safe web browsers to Best Free Parental Filter
Omit several products for further testing.

Remah

June 2010

Update review.

Rizar

February 2009

New review.

Rizar

Tags

best Internet safety freeware, Internet security software, Internet safety check, safe website check, site adviser, site ratings, site scanning, mywot/WOT - Web of Trust, LinkExtend, McAfee SiteAdvisor, Trend Micro TrendProtect, Trend Micro Site Safety, VirustTotal, URLVoid, McAfee Threat Intelligence

Back to the top of the article.

 

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Comments

by ichabod on 7. March 2013 - 2:28  (106002)

Lots of bad links in the Supplement to this article.

by MM (not verified) on 14. December 2011 - 19:34  (85025)

I have both WOT and Link Extend as Firefox add ons. Plus Avast webrep which is pretty good. For link scanning, I also have Firefox's Scan It With Dr.Web.

by Remah on 14. December 2011 - 20:11  (85028)

In the next update to this article I'll be evaluating Avast Web Rep and Scan It with Dr. Web.

by Anonymouse (not verified) on 24. October 2011 - 13:24  (82051)

Bitdefender TrafficLight + WOT = the best way to a completely secure web browsing experience

by elenaluz (not verified) on 13. September 2011 - 10:22  (79517)

Any plans to add Norton Safe Web to these tests?

by Remah on 15. September 2011 - 11:40  (79650)

Yes, I'll be reviewing it this month.

by Richard Dixon (not verified) on 17. August 2011 - 11:28  (77790)

AVG Linkscanner won't install if you're using Avast Antivirus, possibly because the Avast package now has its own built-in internet security "rater" tool, which is similar to WOT. That said, WOT and Avast work well together, at least in Firefox.

by Geert on 4. August 2011 - 19:09  (76919)

Remah, please recheck all the links in this article. Some are simply just linking to www.techsupportalert.com instead of the site of the mentioned freeware.

by Remah on 5. August 2011 - 3:49  (76947)

Thanks. I've found and corrected them.

by rhiannon on 2. July 2011 - 3:41  (74648)

Great article Remah, thanks. :)

by A__nonymous (not verified) on 13. June 2011 - 14:42  (73739)

WOT is like Wikipedia. You have no idea at all what a rater/writer's agenda is, and because a lot of it is correct people are taking these sites as gospel when content may well reflect bias. I find it all the time on Wikipedia.

by harmonijustice (not verified) on 25. August 2011 - 16:16  (78341)

WOT cannot be trusted. A__nonymous is correct. Using mass rating tool by its Platinum members to give negative rating to thousand of websites is suspicious at best. Perhaps to buy its service to bring up your rating... That in itself is highly suspicious practice to strike fear in people and creating false sense of security running to them.

by rroberto on 1. July 2011 - 19:13  (74626)

WOT's agenda seems clear, based on how the site 'works'
+ Every less-than-major site starts out with a negative rating,
+ Webpage owners are approached to buy a "WOT membership" -- making the service resemble a "protection racket"
+ any competitor can go to a website's WOT page to repeatedly click on "0's" without having to give a written reason for those ratings...the little fish in the big pool have no chance...unless they buy a "membership"
+ even with dozens of great comments, any site can get stuck with unsafe safety ratings because positive comments play no role in the end rating result
+ many negative comments are in languages other than English -- with no translation -- so they can't be easily understood, let alone responded to in English.

by Remah on 2. July 2011 - 0:15  (74637)

It is hard to see how "WOTs agenda is clear" from your comments. I presume that you mean WOT uses stand-over tactics to get money. The problem is that your comments don't support that argument due to errors of fact. Indeed, I'm mystified how the last comment relates at all.

I respond in the same order to your points. I reiterate what I've said before: it is not possible to build a perfect reputation rating system.

+ Actually, sites start with an unrated rating. They can get ratings from user ratings and trusted third-party lists. As far as I know, "less-than-major" sites are less likely to have a positive rating from those trusted third-party products.
+ It is clearly not a "protection racket" which involves the protectors being the enforcers without reference to any other party. WOT does nothing to rate a site bad without input from others, mainly the customers/users, because WOT is a clearinghouse for their assessments of a site. Here's a link to a similar complaint against WOT and the rebuttal:
http://www.ripoffreport.com/internet/web-of-trust/web-of-trust-wot-scam-...
+ Yes, malicious users can attack a site's reputation but they have to rate a lot of sites correctly for their ratings to carry much weight. I understand that some people are hateful enough to take the time and effort to do this: create multiple user accounts, provide many correct ratings to build up their user reputations, and then provide bad ratings targeted at just one site. In a similar manner, someone can pump up their site reputation. Or just get all their friends to give it an excellent rating.
+ Yes, ratings affect the site rating. Comments provide more information which I find most helpful to understand why a site gets a bad rating.
+ I'm glad that there are users leaving comments in other languages. Personally, I want WOT to be a global service because it will improve my browsing safety.

by justme (not verified) on 20. May 2012 - 18:03  (93746)

WOT (Web of Trust) has too much power to influence the rating of any particular site. The main issue is if the site represents a potential risk which can be identified by the main AV solutions, is not about user opinion, if they like or not like the site; opinions should not be a part of the rating at any point. Norton’s (safe web lite + DNS) approach is much more trusted and your stubbornness in defending your illogical decision shows bias. Bias and a defensive stance seem to be a common response on this website when someone disagrees with the so called editors.

by MidnightCowboy on 21. May 2012 - 4:57  (93779)

This is trolling. Had it not been for Remah's constructive reply, this comment would already have been deleted. We provide ample opportunity for folks to give feedback about the site, it's content and how it is run, but as with everywhere else, this must be done within the rules (see rule #7).

by Remah on 21. May 2012 - 5:09  (93781)

You're right. It's just my first day back in the "office". :)

by MidnightCowboy on 21. May 2012 - 5:40  (93782)

Good to see you back :)

by Remah on 21. May 2012 - 1:52  (93764)

The tone and content of your comment suggests that you have not read this article and its supplement. Nor do you appear to have tested and compared the ability of each product to protect against Internet-sourced threats. I did, and it was several weeks of work. I did it so other users don't have to. I didn't do it to state my opinion which was, at the time, decidedly against WOT.

I designed the tests to show up WOT. But WOT performed very well whether I only used sites with actual threats confirmed by AV products or I included sites rated as risky on a broader range of measures. WOT's broad range of inputs (including AV blacklists) ensures this.

PS I will be testing the products again when I get time.

by Remah on 13. June 2011 - 21:33  (73756)

WOT is highest rated here because it is effective despite obvious shortcomings. I found that bias is fairly easy to identify but you have to look at the complete scorecard and not just the overall rating.

by kendall.a on 13. June 2011 - 15:30  (73742)

I will not argue with your point. However, we have chosen WOT on this site as our "standard". In other words, we only allow green or yellow rated WOT sites to be posted here. We do not allow sites to be posted that are red-rated by WOT.

by Rich (not verified) on 13. June 2011 - 13:40  (73736)

Has anyone had positive experiences with the TrafficLight extension from Bitdefender ? I have it installed and no downside yet, just not sure of there is a lot of value at this point.

Thanks !

by Remah on 13. June 2011 - 22:12  (73760)

In my tests all versions of the TrafficLight beta were only average for protection.

The Firefox extension worked the best with the Chrome and Safari extensions significantly less effective and the full install having too many problems.

I'll test it again once the product is finished.

by DrBongo on 13. June 2011 - 12:28  (73730)

I am a strong advocate for WOT. I recommend it to all, but there is one negative issue you fail to mention. WOT is great for catching rogue sites, but there is an issue with false positives. Often a political or religious site receives a poor rating because many people rate them as malicious simply because they disagree with the content. If you use it knowing this you can usually safely ignore any warnings if a site is political or religious.

by Remah on 13. June 2011 - 21:41  (73757)

I do discuss that issue in the Supplement. False positives are not much of a problem from the user perspective which is the basis for the review.

by Remah on 2. July 2011 - 2:05  (74643)

I've recently found some of the US religious sites that have bad ratings simply because people don't like what they say. Although I don't think they accurately represent what the Bible says, most of these sites have been badly rated simply for expressing their views.

My approach is to avoid them unless I really wanted something from them. In practice, this may save me further problems because forceful and extreme views seem to motivate people to do things that are unnacceptable. On the one hand, those against those sites have provided falsified ratings. For example, giving bad ratings for "Vendor reliability" when the sites sell nothing. On the other hand, a supporter of one of those sites, probably the author, used a feature of this site to insert a hidden link to his site. Our excellent moderators detected it here but who knows what problems I might have at their site.

by Rizar on 13. June 2011 - 18:38  (73750)

I haven't noticed this, but of course people circulate around different sites. Do you have any statistics to support your claims? The most popular conservative, or leaning conservative, sites have dark green ratings, such as Drudge Report, RealClearPolitics, The Economist, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, etc.

Now on other matters (and not in response to the above poster) I'd like to note that a lot of people in the comments are confused about how WOT works. It's important that someone (for the sake of sanity) warn visitors that some of these recent comments lack perspective and understanding of WOT.

To curious readers, it's worth researching WOT's algorithm and understanding some of the following: the automated black lists WOT draws from, the safe guards for unusual voting patterns (the algorithm lessens the votes of some if the raters are biased), and the steps sites can take to improve their rating.

Not to lecture, but it doesn't surprise me that some are confused about how WOT works; many people don't understand how democracy works either. It reminds me of voters who believe voting for a president is their most important democratic duty, and forget, as Yoda might say, one person a democracy does not make (it's actually the least democratically meaningful vote possible within a democracy).

Some people are also misunderstanding the way WOT voting works, the way the votes are weighted, and the way WOT draws from blacklists automatically. Additionally, no one has supported their claims about bias in WOT by providing statistics to help us understand whether the bias is as common as finding a Ralph Nader supporter or is as common as finding a major party supporter. Are these claims about bias mere conspiracy theory masquerading as objective reporting? It's mean to suggest that these claims might be conspiracy theory, but I don't know if they are or are not without evidence to support them.

by MidnightCowboy on 13. June 2011 - 20:35  (73752)

Thanks Rizar :)

by Ted Joy (not verified) on 13. June 2011 - 13:04  (73733)

You're partly right about this. The thing that bothers me, though, is that since they falsely rate so many conservative/religious sites as dangerous when they are actually safe, I have to wonder if there are malicious (i.e., malware etc.) liberal/anti-religious sites that they rate as safe. What's that old trial-lawyers' maxim, false in one, false in all? I've long since given up on using WOT, much less trusting it.

by Remah on 13. June 2011 - 21:49  (73758)

I don't trust WOT either but I will continue to use it because it is very effective protection. If a site I want to look at is blocked I always check the scorecard and see whether the negative rating is from third-party blacklists or from user ratings or both. Of all the rating products WOT makes it easier to work out whether user ratings are accurate or not.