Web of Trust My Web of Trust, http://mywot.com 12,000,000 Users Trust This Scam Helsinki, Internet

So many scam artists have taken to brigading WOT because they have lost the opportunity to cheat, just like the suspect complaint I'm commenting upon now. "tons of rumors flying around the internet . . . I do not have a strong basis to back this up" is all the proof this complaint can come up with because, guess what? They are one of the people running scams or who were caught out by WOT members.

I've avoided being cheated out of money due to a scam Canadian florist operation that had been keyword stuffing their site through Google. WOT helped me when Google couldn't screen these bums out. 

Hi, good article, look, in Germany is something similar written:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.kriegsberichterstattung.com/2011/12/%25E2%2580%259Ewot-%25E2%2580%2593-web-of-trust-die-grose-volksverarsche-eines-unseriosen-mozilla-ad-on-anbieters/&ei=Oj7mTt30GYjTsgb_iOTSCQ&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCQQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dwot%2Bweb%2Bof%2Btrust%2Bkriegsberichterstattung.com%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1440%26bih%3D703%26prmd%3Dimvns

Reply to MyWOT rebutal...

I am getting pretty tired reading the same replies by Deb, Sami and the rest of WOT. Those replies read like boring marketing-text and the parrot-like repetitions start to show cracks while years go by as it becomes obvious that mywot.com is not what it would like to be: "a system to be trusted".

Having seen these answers over and over again, time has come to open my mouth.  So lean back and enjoy the ride!

Why not to trust MyWOT...

It's actually rather simple to explain why it's not a good idea to trust the "Web Of Trust".

They use a simple <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likert_scale">Likert scale</a> as a rating system.

The format of a typical five-level Likert item is:

1. Strongly disagree
   
   
   
2. Disagree
   
   
   
3. Neither agree nor disagree
   
   
   
4. Agree
   
   
   
5. Strongly agree

BUT - it is a known fact (not only among scientists) that  Likert scales may be subject to distortion from several causes:

1. Respondents may avoid using extreme response categories (central tendency bias);
   
   
   
2. agree with statements as presented (acquiescence bias);
   
   
   
3. or try to portray themselves or their organization in a more favorable light (social desirability bias).

That "distortion" as described in Nr. 2 happens in - at least - two places at MyWOT:

• activity points - people want to get platinum to gain access to the Mass Rating Tool as soon as possible;
  
  
  
• "secret" user reputation - this is the individual user "trust" which represents the "power" a user has when rating a website.

The later (secret user reputation) also is part of Nr. 3: the social desirability bias. This "social desirability" is something which also is underlined in the community, where people get intimidated and slandered if they don't swim with the rest of the fish in there.

To keep it short: MyWOT got the Likert scale wrong.

Another reason why not to trust MyWOT...

If you look at it, the reason not to trust such a system become apparent. If you count in that you are also sharing your complete browsing history with MyWOT, you know that using such an "add-on" is anything but secure. Besides, where's the privacy in that? WOT rates websites down for using a tracking cookie while at the same time, WOT is acting like a tracking tool itself. Does "spyware" ring a bell?

If you're still unsure why not to trust MyWOT...

You need a third reason, don't you? I knew it.

Ok, here it is. A direct copy of their website's homepage description: "WOT is a community-based, free safe surfing tool for browsers that provides website ratings & reviews to help web users as they search, surf & shop online."

Let me break that down for you:

1. WOT is a community-based, free safe surfing tool for browsers
   
   
   
2. provides website ratings & reviews to help web users as they search, surf & shop online.

If you still dodn't get it: "WOT is about TRUST and NOT ABOUT SAFETY!"

Everyone rates what he or she thinks about a website like in: "Do I think this website is trustworthy?"

Think about that for a while...

Now ask yourself some questions:

• Would you trust a website because a right-winged skinhead thinks it's trustworthy? MyWOT can't rule out that extreme right-winged or left-winged people using WOT to rate their own websites.
  
  
  
• Do you think you're safe from visiting a pedophile's online photo gallery just because you are using WOT? Don't even start thinking that. If the pedophile finds enough friends that say his website is trustworthy, it will be rated "good". That's where WOT employees will give you their default reply "rate your own" which translates to "shut up and give us another rating because we live of those".
  
  
  
• How much trust can they provide? Not much if you look at the percentage of domain names WOT has ratings for in comparison to the real number of domain names in use all over the internet. Remember that they only provide ratings about website WOT KNOWS, not the websites YOU VISIT. So you can throw the "trust" over board and spare yourself the burdon to install the add-on in the first place.

The truth is...

The truth is that MyWOT is run by a company that has to make money to survive. I know what's going to be replied so I'll specify this a bit more: their "sponsors" of ventured capital expect profit!

Selling "trust seals" is only a small part of the profit. The "anonymous website history" you send them with every website you visit is the real capital!

The result of all of this...

No matter how "nice" the marketing replies and mywot wiki links read and no matter how often MyWOT employees state "you don't understand the mywot system", there facts are different.

There are people that DO understand the system. Those people also see the failures WOT has, being a Likert-based rating and reputation system with missing distortion control.

Today, you've met one of those people: me.

I can already imagine what Sami (WOT) would reply... probably something that reads like "we have implemented solutions to that but I can't show them to you because our algorithm is secret".

Based on this presumption, I'll reply to that in advance:

Where is the reputation and trust MyWOT provides related to itself?

Don't tell me to look at your own, manipulated scorecard. Besides that, I have NEVER seen ANY proof to anything WOT said. They failed providing it themselves and they failed to provide it upon request. All the secrecy may be cool when you're working for a governmental intelligence agency, but when it comes to a reputation and trust system like MyWOT, such secrecy merely provides the nails to the coffin.

And if you need some last, wooden planks to close the coffin...

What about the lawsuit agains MyWOT? There was an oral hearing in Florida on August, 9th 2011 as Vesa (CEO of WOT) stated in the forum. Since then it has become awfully quite since. My best guess is that it's not done yet. If there would have been any good news after several years of struggling with it, I am sure that WOT would have issues an according press release or at least they would have dropped a line in the forum or on their blog. Looks to me it's not all "cake" in the WOT bakery.

On their homepage, they state that the WOT add-on has been downloaded around 25.000.000 times. Note that that's "downloads", not "active users"... they tend to "forget" to tell you emphasize the difference.

What they also forgot to explain is why that number said 12.000.000 last week and now shows 25.000.000 and counting. So after wasting precious 3 years to count those 12.000.000 downloads, they suddenly doubled their downloads in a week? I don't think so...

Why I personally will never use WOT again and tell everyone to avoid it?

I guess it's a "TRUST" thing. ;)

It sounds like you haven't understood how the rating system works and are intentionally providing misleading information about the trust seal. Allow me to clarify:

1. It should be noted that our reputations are not only about safety, they tell you how much other people trust websites. Of course, safety is an important factor here, because people rarely trust unsafe sites.

2. The rating system is meritocratic, which means ratings are weighted based on how reliable the user is considered. Whether the rating is positive or negative has nothing to do with how it's weighted. Users have to earn the system's trust before their ratings gain weight, which is why creating multiple accounts and spamming ratings for a site has very little impact on the reputation.

You can read more from our FAQ:

http://www.mywot.com/wiki/FAQ#Reputations_are_easy_to_manipulate

3. Reputations are not for sale. In fact, you can only buy a trust seal if your site has already earned a good reputation, and should the reputation go bad in future, you will lose the trust seal. WOT doesn't rate websites and has no incentive to rate sites poorly in order to sell you something:

http://www.mywot.com/wiki/FAQ#Selling_trust_seals_means_reputations_can_be_bought

If you have a problem with your site's reputation, you can post to our forum and request users to review the site:

http://www.mywot.com/forum

is available at this site.