Web of Trust & Website Ratings

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Tony Cole

Tony Cole

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May 11, 2014
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Hi everyone:

I have installed Web of Trust as sometimes Kaspersky's URL advisor shows no ratings for websites. However, on websites I have gone to look at e.g., for 3D wallpapers WOT shows a red rating, use VirusTotal and they all say the websites is safe. So, can you trust the ratings; or would some deliberately give a poor rating/review?

Tony :)
 
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That is what i have wondered for a while now but i guess the majority of people do the right thing one would hope with the ratings but who knows. :eek::D
 
This is why Web of Trust should always be taken with a grain of salt. (or maybe a bucket of salt)
 
Yes, I have now found 15 websites that they rate as unsafe (red) listed as viruses, spam, suspicious, phishing and so forth. Yet, scan them with VirusTotal and they come back clean and safe to use.
 
On my system after the first page of web search results, I have to refresh the browser and then the Kaspersky website ratings will appear. I'm not sure if its a bug in Kaspersky, a browser cache issue or something else.

On the Kaspersky forum others have reported this issue.
 
Yes, I sometimes get the URL ratings, then I can search for the same thing and I get nothing. I think it will still block malicious web pages as it works in Opera, and that does not install any Kaspersky add-on's.
 
Considering its a community based ratings, its better to consult from embedded third party source of WOT (HpHost, MDL, and others) caused it will be an automatic either red or yellow besides of user comments.
 
Could be a result of many factors.

{Post Edit tomorrow}
 
Alexstrasza said:
This is why Web of Trust should always be taken with a grain of salt. (or maybe a bucket of salt)
Click to expand...
Am sorry to say, but WOT is still the best tool to detect spam/phishing/untrusted websites like no/other.

Tony Cole said:
Yes, I have now found 15 websites that they rate as unsafe (red) listed as viruses, spam, suspicious, phishing and so forth. Yet, scan them with VirusTotal and they come back clean and safe to use.
Click to expand...

There are various reasons why WOT tries to label a Yellow/Red rating to websites. Even websites with a privacy policy undefined might go into the Yellow rating. The best reason why WOT is so effective or useful is it's comments section posted by users that you can get by clicking on the extension, and then user comments.

I tried searching for wallpapers sites that you said were marked red from Google. Not many appeared. But one that appeared was

www.livewallpapers.mob.org - Just taking a look at the comments section gives me these results why it has got a red rating. The site doesn't have a privacy policy, contact page without encryption, has hidden whois without customer knowledge etc etc.

Another good thing about WOT is that even if a site has been rated red/yellow the site owners can ask to reset the reputation provided they review the comments and take the necessary measures so that the website is safe.
 
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jackuars said:
Am sorry to say, but WOT is still the best tool to detect spam/phishing/untrusted websites like no/other.
Click to expand...
I think you misunderstood my intention - yes, I do use WoT, but don't take it as gospel. Unsafe sites can have green ratings or unrated, and it's my biggest concern. Sites with red ratings are usually that way for a good reason - which a look at the comments can reveal why.
 
Used it long time ago, my opinion is that it is not so good because everyone could add ratings which are not verified.
 
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