WOT is a Firefox add-on that adds a coloured ring near the home page button of your browser. This tool lets you know easily, by changing colour, if a website is trusted, safe to use and also the general reputation of that site among end users. You can add your own rating by clicking the coloured ring and give your score on trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety.

If you click on “View scorecard for rating details” a new web page will be opened where you can write a comment on the web site you were visiting and read what other people say about it. Usefully, the program also displays references to that web site found on other sites. Another very interesting function in this page is the ‘Whois’ one. Click this to access lots of information such as front page details, indexed data, registry data, and server data. You can even find a physical address behind a web site. There are cases in which even just having the ability to access this information makes it worth having this program installed!

The only flaw I can see is that most end users can’t really know how a web site manages their privacy. What people can know about the personal data management of a website or if it saves malware or tracking programs for marketing purposes etc. This sort of information should be provided by a pool of experts to be accurate.

If you want to discover the reputation of a web site, try WOT and get a graphic report on the reliability and accuracy of any site, plus tons of other interesting details, such as the physical address behind a website.