by RachelK

Created on: February 10, 2009

If your like me you like to surf the web. Unfortunately I'm finding more and more websites seem to be infected with adware, spyware, or viruses. I have virus and spyware protection yet somehow still manage to pick up malicious programs at times on my computer. Opening emails seems to also be especially risky these days even from people you know. I've had the most trouble with lyric sites, social network sites, and just plain old surfing the net for information.

I stumbled upon a nifty little download the other day. It is called WOT, which stands for Web of Trust. The company was founded in 2006 by two visionary graduate students. Their mission is to make the internet a safer place to be. It is a security add on that you can get for your browser. There are downloads available for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. The add on is small and only takes a few seconds to download depending on your internet speed. I have experienced no problems with the add on or my computer since downloading. You can download the free add on from their website http://www.mywot.com/.

The way WOT works is that after you download the add on you will see a colored circle when you do an internet search, such as you would with Google or Yahoo. There are five codings that are given to websites. The colors used are Red, Orange, Yellow, Light Green, and Green. With red being the highest risk associated with a site. Grey or grey with a question mark showing means the site has not been rated yet. Green means that no security risks have been reported. Each site that has been given a rating is rated on trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy, and child safety. You can even check the rating of your favorite site on their website. I love that feature!

You also have the ability to report sites to them, and they have a forum and community of users on their website. Should you stumble across a risky site a warning box will appear with a red circle asking you if you want to continue. I especially like the fact that even links sent to me in my emails are given a rating of safety. I was really surprised after installing the add on and then searching at how many risky sites I was visiting. I have to say that after using this add on I have any mysterious cases of adware show up.

The numbers are updated often on their site and to date 21,502,289 websites have been rated and 1,507,854 carry a dangerous rating. These numbers seem to grow daily. If you do a lot of searching, have teens or kids who surf the internet I would highly recommend using this add on. While nothing beats good virus protection and common sense, I believe that a program like WOT is just an added plus to keeping your computer safe.

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