WOT Services
 | This article may be unbalanced toward certain viewpoints. (April 2013) |
 | |
| Industry | Internet safety |
|---|---|
| Founded | July 2006 |
| Headquarters | Helsinki, Finland |
| Website | www.mywot.com |
WOT Services, Ltd is a Finnish company that runs the partly crowdsourced Internet website reputation rating tool Web of Trust (WOT). The installed WOT browser add-on shows its users the reputations of websites, which are calculated through a combination of user ratings and data from other sources.
History
This site is most likely a scam. If you suddenly find an unjustified and incorrect review, such as your website being labelled as a paid per click advertising site, they will not remove the review. Instead they will ask you to register with them and claim the site as the site owner. This involves inserting a piece of code into your website that theycan then monitor for whatever reason. Scams like this are all too often used to increase their "member" numbers which can then potentially be sold to advertisers or email farmers. The reviews are most likely made by a bot.
Around 4,241,223 reviews have been added by a superhuman member called GURBL who has been a member since November 2010. That's a staggering 68,406 reviews per month, or 2,280 reviews per day. To spend that much time in front of a computer GURBL would need to be a total computer geek, allowing for the average time spent masturbating daily by a computer geek that amount of "reviewing" would not be possible. It is entirely likely therefore that GURBL is a bot.
In light of their appauling service to site owners and prospective customers, anyone with any sense would not trust this company if they said it was dark at midnight.
Beware, do not fall for this scam.
WOT was founded in 2006 by Sami Tolvanen and Timo Ala-Kleemola, who wrote the WOT software as post-graduates at the University of Technology in Tampere, Finland. They launched the service officially in 2007, with serial entrepreneur and angel investor Esa Suurio as CEO. In November 2009 Suurio moved on to his next endeavor.
The company has partnered with Facebook, hpHosts, LegitScript, Mail.ru, Panda Security, Phishtank and TRUSTe.
WOT's services
The WOT browser add-on does two things: (1) it sends user ratings to the WOT site, and (2) it displays the computed results via color-coded icons in the user's browser tool-bar and next to external links on the pages of leading search engines, email services and social network sites. The add-on source code is public.
The program software at WOT headquarters is not public. According to the company information it is designed to compute the measure of trust the rating users have in websites, enhanced with data from a number of third-party sources. The user rating system claims to be meritocratic; the weight of ratings are algorithmically calculated for each user individually.
To generate revenue WOT licenses the use of its reputation database to other businesses.
Reviews
The rating tool has received several reviews in the press.[1][2][3]
Lawsuit
On December 7, 2010, ten companies all associated to Ayman El-Difrawi aka Alec Difrawi filed a lawsuit in Florida against WOT Services for defamation, violating rights, conspiracy and manipulating algorithms, among other claims, demanding WOT to remove ratings and comments for their numerous websites.[4] On December 8, 2011, the case was dismissed with prejudice. [5][6]
See also
References
- ^ Rubenking, Neil J. "PC Magazine - Web of Trust Review and Rating". Retrieved 17 May 2011.
- ^ "Gizmo's freeware - Best Free Internet Safety Check". 6 May 2011. Retrieved 17 May 2011.
- ^ "Mashable - Web of Trust is the Robert De Niro of Reputation Sites". Retrieved 4 December 2007.
- ^ "WOT blog - Safe Surfing Tool Web of Trust Sued over Community Warnings". Retrieved 22 December 2011.
- ^ Orange County court records search Case No. 2010-CA-022724-O, Career Network, Inc. et al v. WOT Services, Ltd. et al
- ^ "ArcticStartup - WOT Wins Lawsuit In The US". ArcticStartup. Retrieved 22 December 2011.