What is WOT?

January 28, 2011 · by .ed

WOT stands for Web Of Trust, and it's a really popular way to add an additional level of protection and transparency to the web. Available as an extension in Opera 11, WOT takes a community style approach to protection by letting real users rate sites with respect to the trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy protection and child safety of the site. With over 17 million users WOT is extremely well respected.

“For example, the WOT community is better at detecting scam sites than automated systems alone because it requires input from real consumers to identify bad customer service. We are pleased to make the WOT extension available as another line of defense for Opera users.”

- Vesa Perälä, CEO of WOT

WOT can even protect you before visiting a site by showing you the trustworthiness of a link with the WOT icon is displayed in search results, Wikipedia links and links in other popular sites. Pretty handy.

WOT Extension for Opera 11 - Add it, rate it, and let us know what you think!

Readers' comments 22

Left under the original article, as archived.

mubaidrFriday, January 28, 2011 7:11:29 PM
Nice
ZodiusFriday, January 28, 2011 7:15:12 PM
Nice, thanks for introducing this to us
MConorFriday, January 28, 2011 7:17:02 PM
Already had it
Garath EmmsFriday, January 28, 2011 7:27:11 PM
Used it for ages on all my Browsers, glad its on Opera now!
Cutting SpoonFriday, January 28, 2011 7:55:59 PM
An interesting service, I mostly use it with a search accelerator.

Could Opera possibly add some hardcoded "Extension Categories"? To prevent users from installing components that conflict with each other, you see. Or possibly there should be a way to warn about hotkey conflicts or DOM race conditions?

For example, some of the Youtube extensions do not work together.
Zdenko TimulakFriday, January 28, 2011 8:52:13 PM
great news for more secure browsing
Charles SchlossFriday, January 28, 2011 9:16:42 PM
It is great, I does better than AVG, and Norton Safeweb, and McAfee SiteAdvisor (from my testing) as they have the sites blocked much faster and even ones that are bad
JoelFriday, January 28, 2011 9:21:31 PM
Is very useful, thanks
HurrFriday, January 28, 2011 9:51:50 PM
I had seen the extension before and hadn't taken notice.

Thanks to this article I was like "hey, this is kind of useful..."

Now I'm installing it. Will actively use it as I believe this gives a somewhat trustworthy 'review' about a website. I'll still be skeptical, however, but I'll keep the ratings in mind.

Thank you
PhilFriday, January 28, 2011 10:29:38 PM
meh - I've heard rumours thaT this app suffers from people being negative about sites they simply dislike the content of (this was some time ago so maybe the 'gaming' has been solved)
TamilFriday, January 28, 2011 10:33:35 PM
d4rkn1ghtSaturday, January 29, 2011 3:31:48 AM
vattsSaturday, January 29, 2011 10:02:38 AM
JaredSaturday, January 29, 2011 12:23:47 PM
I have to say thank you to PCWorld for featuring it on an article of theirs. Made me understood how it works
TheTimaKSaturday, January 29, 2011 3:04:02 PM
Miles DavisSaturday, January 29, 2011 6:58:30 PM
Interesting, looks good !
Ravindran NavaneethanSunday, January 30, 2011 4:35:52 PM
Registered with WOT long time ago, haven't used it though. Not only using it now, but loving it. Thanks Opera & WOT
AsturexSunday, January 30, 2011 8:14:00 PM
Been using WOT on all my browsers for years and recommend it when I can. Just trying Opera again and glad to find WOT is available, it will be the first add-on I install. I suspect WOT may be 'gamed' a bit sometimes, but even if it is I'm convinced WOT is still a great extra line of defence against rogue sites.
Feri_ququMonday, January 31, 2011 3:55:03 AM
pegasMonday, January 31, 2011 11:19:02 AM
It's a perfect companion to security applications. However I would like to see an option for a web page with bad rating to go back on the last visited web page. Now you are only prompted about the security issues on particular page but you don't have an option to return back. Moreover the bad page is fully loaded in the background what is quite odd and non secure. If a page has bad rating it shouldn't load unless you confirm you want to continue on that page. Therefore it would be great if there was an option called for instance "STOP ME AND TAKE ME BACK". Just my two cents.

EDIT: Something like PH has developed for his WOT javascript, see at http://my.opera.com/PH`/blog/2010/01/19/new-major-version-of-wot-for-opera-you-can-vote
Cutting SpoonMonday, January 31, 2011 6:56:22 PM
I am having difficulty getting the extension to fully sync to the website; it doesn't seem to add my rating or track my activity, but my warning preferences are fully functional.
amitbaghaMonday, February 7, 2011 7:45:38 PM
Moderator edit: This comment was removed for breaching our terms of service.