I am using mywot for couple of days, and I would say I kind of like it, though its not something unexpected. Sure, I am happy, that most of sites belonging to firms I work with do well.

My main concern was that community-driven opinions might be incorrect regards some of the product vendors due to popular opinion and not facts. This still remains true. WOT still votes out some of the commercial sites that have low reputation in non-commercial or competitor/managed communities in security field. Some of relatively good product vendors still suffer for their former actions and public opinion years after they corrected (more or less) their behavior. Well, nothing surprising.

The good thing is nice warning system I use both for avoiding bad sites and looking for them when I want to spot new threats. I like search result enhancement the most, and it helps me distinguishing sites I need when I browse security related search results.

What would improve MyWot? Here are my thoughts:

1. Allow user to browse site without warnings WHEN he is on it. Its quite annoying to close warning screen on each page. Or give an option "this session only" to disable the screen.

2. More consistency on what are good sites and bad sites, some guidelines as different people rate same level sites quite differently. To confirm this, I checked couple of poker rooms, rated quite high in industry (ratings from poker works room ratings  ) . The WOT ratings vary from very bad, to good although these rooms provide more or less same level of service, and I have not heard any specific complaints on the bad rated ones. Interesting enough, best ratings are for rooms that DO NOT complies with UIGEA, which prohibits accepting money from USA players, and worst ratings are for the rooms that prohibit American players from playing. Revenge? Well, More like distribution of WOT users.

 

Categories: Reviews

Giedrius Majauskas

I am a internet company owner and project manager living at Lithuania. I am interested in computer security, health and technology topics.

6 Comments

Rob Deangelo · July 23, 2009 at 1:02 pm

It’s not perfect because Esa Suurio and MyWOT is a scam and so they don’t care if it doesn’t work perfectly. Notice he’s stepping down as CEO in order to “move on”… And he’s going to take all his users’ info and purchasing histories with him. Good luck to MyWOT users…

Cheryl Watkinson · July 24, 2009 at 9:40 am

Yes! I heard he’s stepping down – and at the same time as when people are coming out about the deceitful practices MyWOT uses. Truth will be told!

mywot lies · June 18, 2011 at 4:40 pm

myWOT, WOT, “Web of Trust” is nothing more than a user opinion tool that has been spammed & gamed by many users to “black lists” sites for their own agenda–whether form competitors, beliefs, etc.

It has NO security features whatsoever. Anyone thinking they are getting some sort of “protection” by using the WOT addon is mistaken. The only think you will get are false negatives.

myWTO fails because
1. don’t require you to have an account
2. if you do get an account there is no verification => easily create as many accounts as you like
3. the addon lets you rate without and account and you can have different addons for each browser => use portable browsers and you have unlimited rating.

I’ve tried to bring these issues up in the forums only to have the posts deleted. Anything that shows WOT as it truly is, is quickly removed from the forums.

So I posted the truth here:
http://mywotlies.wordpress.com/

No one should trust the “Web of Trust” addon/site!

    Giedrius · June 19, 2011 at 2:35 am

    mywot lies: Fresh user accounts without an history have very little impact for WOT rating. They will work on sites that have no rating or rating with low reliability, and thats it. Each browser has “virtual” account, that is account with its own history. Thus manipulation of ratings is hard.
    Yes, there are common views of WOT users that might not be an average of total internet users. Thus I would not care of WOT rating if you are site about homeopathy, religious views, alternate medicine and some other things.

Global unlike: it does exit as MyWOT toolbar – Giedrius Majauskas blog · July 1, 2010 at 5:10 am

[…] Most of my income is done in computer security market, and I have follow various tools and events to stay on the top. As with any other market, there are very interesting how the computer security is reflected in social media or how Social media is used in it. Security market got it all backwards and released semi-global unlike button for its own market in terms of MyWOT. […]

How to stop listening to bullshit and make your PC secure for real · August 17, 2010 at 9:22 am

[…] are also toolbars, like SiteAdvisor or MyWot. They might provide some insight for safer browsing, but they will not protect from infected […]

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