You’ve probably come across numerous suspicious websites while browsing. Accurately identifying these websites and their trustworthiness can sometimes be difficult. The Web of Trust (WOT) service seeks to make this easier.
So what is WOT, and how does it help you verify a website’s legitimacy?
What Is the Web of Trust (WOT) Service?
Web of Trust is firstly a community of web users initiated and managed by WOT Services LP. It’s also a cybersecurity service that indicates the trustworthiness of sites.
WOT Services LPstates that WOT is “a worldwide community of millions of users dedicated to creating and maintaining a safe and trustworthy web experience.” Community members share reviews of websites and applications they’ve used, and the service,using machine learning algorithms, creates trust scores for these sites and apps. The goal is that with these scores, you may avoid malicious sites while browsing online.
You can access WOT via its website, as a browser extension, and on your Android and iOS mobile devices.
How Does the Web of Trust (WOT) Service Work?
WOT encourages its community members to share their personal experiences and provide feedback on websites they’ve visited, allowing others to stay informed and protected from malicious sites. After gathering this data, WOT analyzes and compares them with third-party information to ensure that they are reliable.
When you request information about a website, WOT analyzes thesite’s Uniform Resource Locator (URL)and compares it against its extensive database of user-generated ratings, reviews, and comments. WOT also performs regular website security checks using machine learning algorithms to find evidence of malicious site activities. Based on its database, WOT assigns trust ratings (only accessible via the browser extension) using colored icons.
A green icon implies that a website is considered safe and trustworthy by the WOT community; you should feel confident visiting these sites.
A yellow icon suggests that the website has mixed reviews, meaning you should proceed with caution.
Lastly, a red icon indicates the website is unsafe and may be linked to scams and malicious activities.
When you encounter a site not accounted for in the database, you’ll find a question mark or gray icon instead.
How to Use the Web of Trust Browser Extension and Mobile App
To use WOT while browsing on your computer, you must install the extension. Visit theWOT website, and scroll to the end of the page, just before the links. You’ll find icons with links to all WOT’s relevant browser extension store pages.
Once you select an icon (for instance, the Chrome icon), you’ll be directed to the WOT extension page in your browser’s store (in this case, the Chrome Web Store). On the extension page, clickAdd to (Your Browser Name).
Once you’ve installed WOT, every time you do a web search, you’ll find colored icons or question marks beside the results. Also, if you right-click a link, the option to check its WOT ratings will be available.
Alternatively, when you visit a website, you can click the extension to check the site’s standings.
On mobile, WOT takes it further. you may scan your smartphone to see if malicious apps are installed, use the email protection feature toprevent phishing scams, and enable safe browsing to determine if a website is safe before clicking.
What are the Benefits of WOT?
WOT offers several advantages to anyone looking to enhance their online security.
1. Initial Warning System
Web of Trust helps you quickly identify harmful and suspicious websites. When you encounter websites with potential phishing, malware, or scam risks, WOT warns you of the site’s high-risk factor using users’ ratings and reviews.
These are updated in real-time, so website scores are typically relevant.
2. Easy to Use
Web of Trust’s intuitive interface makes it easy to navigate. The simple color-coded visual cues make identifying safe and risky websites easy. This user-friendly interface is widely accessible, regardless of your technical know-how.
3. Based on Peer Reviews
Web of Trust’s approach is based on data from its community members; the system doesn’t rely on a centralized authority. By collecting this data, WOT aims to create adistributed and decentralized trust networkfor optimal website evaluation.
Moreover, WOT’s nature makes it harder for a single individual or organization to fake ratings.
4. Privacy and Anonymity
You’re not required to provide personal information to create profiles or access WOT’s services and features. You’re also not required to reveal your identity when making reviews or ratings.
What are the Limitations of WOT?
While the WOT service has advantages, there are severe limitations involved too.
1. Nontransparent Data Collection and Use
Privacy concerns about WOT have caused the service to lose the trust of many people. There have been several alleged revelations of WOT selling stored user browsing data to third-party companies for marketing and analytics.
Additionally, the extent and nature of WOT’s data collection aren’t entirely clear, displaying the system’s lack of transparency and compromise to users’ data security.
2. Relies Mainly on Active User Participation
Web of Trust is built on a vast user community and their knowledge. WOT needs a steady flow of user-contributed ratings and reviews to maintain effectiveness and accuracy. If there is a smaller or less active user base, then WOT’s trust ratings become less accurate and reliable.
3. Vulnerable to Data Manipulations
Web of Trust is wholly dependent on user-contributed data, increasing risks of manipulation by malicious users. Some malicious individuals may employ bots or manually provide many positive reviews and ratings to deceive users into trusting their fraudulent sites.
Similarly, some users can give negative reviews to harm reputable competitor websites. They may also unintentionally represent a site incorrectly, maybe after a network glitch; this can lead to false positive or negative reviews.
4. Potential for Over Reliance
Web of Trust may give you a false sense of security if you place excessive trust and confidence in the extension’s trust ratings. Several people may rely on WOT’s simplified color-coded trust ratings without considering outside risk factors and security measures.
5. Limited WOT Adoption
Because WOT adoption is still limited, many websites haven’t been rated. There’s a good chance that the website you want to verify hasn’t been rated, especially if it’s unpopular.
Should You Use Web of Trust?
WOT is useful for obtaining a quick assessment of a website before you take the plunge. However, like all technology, complete trustworthiness is questionable, and WOT’s reliability is even more uncertain due to previous allegations concerning its data practices.
Although WOT’s community-driven approach to site security is ingenious, you should be cautious and consider combining otherreputable web security tools with stronger privacy and security featuresfor web browsing.
But as the adoption of the tool increases and better anti-manipulation features are put in place, WOT may become more reliable over time.
Don’t Depend on the Web of Trust (WOT) Service Alone
WOT is a tool for identifying trusted and malicious websites. Despite WOT’s many benefits and potential, its limitations suggest that you shouldn’t use the service as a primary online security system.
