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.

I have reviewed MyWOT positively in the past, and the points are still valid. However, it is time to talk about several downsides of it (and why I see no real use for it in the future).

First, it works as global unlike button in security market. Lots of people know about it in this area and use it to manipulate listings. Experts do not rate good sites in this area – there are too many, and no one cares if they are not their own. For example, one negative review of one Rogue cleaner in my blog resulted at negative review in MyWOT of my site by him (with several accounts). I know pretty much, that some of other ratings are voted by people advertising similar or same products:)

Second, the toolbar itself is made in the way that suggest auto-confirming votes. It blocks all sites with negative ratings, and many of the negative ratings are reconfirmed by users which do not see the site itself. I had a looong discussion with MyWOT platinum member to remove his comment (and rating), which was made WITHOUT checking website. The mailing forth and back lasted couple days, and I the last mail I got was that he removed the comment and will check the website once he has time.

Third, the sources of auto-rating. MyWOT uses 3 sources (maybe more) to confirm that site is valid : hphosts, delicious and digg. First one is negative, other ones have no bigger impact. All of them have no real basis. Everyone can submit to digg and delicious. Listing in hphosts is not purely black or white either: some of listings are irrelevant (“marketing strategies”) , some are out of control ( IPs history) , some are valid (distribution of malicious software). However, I haven’t seen users evaluating these properly. Everyone would just vote all bards the same.

4th, the site banner issue. I do not think it is ok, but whatever. If people would like to pay for displaying how crowd things the site is secure, then it is great for mywot. All banners based on real testing are much more useful.

5th. Malware, response time and such. MyWOT will not rate sites at once. Thus malware sites will not be rated as dangerous on first vote. Next, lots of malware is spread through sites with good reputation. Like facebook. Thus it will not make web any safer.

To summarize, to protect from parasites I would advice to use Site Advisor Toolbar and not Mywot. However, MyWOT could become much better if adding some changes. For example, incorporating Site Advisors ratings (including possitive and negative sides), checking spent time on the site on rating, checking overall distribution of ratings, etc.

Somewhat funny note is that my site was rated badly by Site Advisor as well, as I have provided a link to Malwarebytes executable or download page (can’t remember). Later on I get my WOT ratings because I am one of the few people that does not advertise Malwarebytes as “the best single protection” or smth.

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.

WOT (Web of trust) is firefox add-on for voting on security of sites and getting warnings. It was recommended in one blog, and I wanted to give it a try.

The idea of the software is quite nice, a community based votes on sites and warning system. The single fear is that it might happen to become a web tool of revenge between competing security advisors, companies and tool developers. Everyone in this market has strong opinions what is legitimate and what is not, and this might be imposed on users. I have yet to know what stoppers are in WOT to protect from this behavior.

That’s why I have tried to install the add-on and ultimately failed. First time it installed, my firefox hanged in the background on restart and I had to kill it. It looked like that the WOT is installed, however it was not activated and no ratings were given.

Thus I have decided to reinstall it. The reinstall went smooth, and an agreement screen appeared, where I confirmed that I want to participate. Sadly, nothing changed, and I still can’t rate anything, or even see ratings.

The funny thing is that to access forum and (probably) the support, you need to be a member, and that means you have to have an active working copy of WOT. Thus I am not sure I’ll want to try fixing WOT installation again.  Even if they might be caused by VISTA or firewall settings (no warnings though, and I assume in the 1mb download there is the site list).

Also, WOT settings page works interestingly, it looks like the apply button is disabled, but that’s might get caused by installation problems.

More information can be found at http://www.mywot.com.

UPDATE

Couple of restarts later the extension started to work. And props for mywot.com support. Will post the results of testing the extension later.