Web of Trust

If you haven't added the Web of Trust add-in to your browser, you are missing out on a unique way to get free crowdsourced information and warnings about potentially "sketchy" websites before you visit them.  It's free, installs quickly and provides easy to use tools for quickly flagging and rating websites, as well as pop-up warnings when you land someplace that the WOT community of users has identified as maybe the not best place to be on the web.

From the Web of Trust website: (http://www.mywot.com)

Web of Trust (WOT) is a website reputation and review service that helps people make informed decisions about whether to trust a website or not. WOT is based on a unique crowdsourcing approach  that collects ratings and reviews from a global community of millions of users who rate and comment on websites based on their personal experience. 

The community-powered approach enables WOT to protect you against threats that only the human eye can spot such as scams, unreliable web stores and questionable content. It complements traditional security solutions that protect computers against technical threats such as viruses and other harmful software. WOT is based on a patented system where user behavior is systematically analyzed and monitored to ensure the ratings are reliable, accurate and constantly updated. In addition, the ratings are validated with trusted third party information, such as blacklists of phishing sites.

WOT works in a very simple way - it shows website reputations as traffic lights next to search results when using Google, Yahoo!, Bing or any other search engine. They are also visible next to links in social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and email like Gmail and Yahoo! Mail as well as other popular sites like Wikipedia. By clicking the traffic light icons you can find out more information about a website’s reputation and other users’ opinions. A green traffic light means users have rated the site as trusted and reliable, red warns about potential threats and yellow indicates that you need to be cautious when using a site.

Example Usage 

Here's a great example of how Web of Trust users help each other out.  While on a site that you want to rate (good or bad), you simply click the WOT icon in your browser and enter your rating information.  Your input is combined with other users to determine the rating that is displayed to future visitors.  In some cases, you may read the comments and decide to proceed with visiting the site, transacting business or using information you find there.  It's up to you, WOT is not a blocker - just a trustworthy advisor.  Give it a try, I think you will find it indispensable.