gHacks technology news » anti-phising http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:37:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Web of Trust: collaborative online security http://www.ghacks.net/2008/12/02/web-of-trust-collaborative-online-security/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/12/02/web-of-trust-collaborative-online-security/#comments Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:30:58 +0000 Joe http://www.ghacks.net/?p=8669 Most systems which warn of unsafe websites, like OpenDNS and Google, work in mysterious, non-transparent ways and websites are often deemed as unsafe for reasons other than safety. Web of Trust is a Firefox extension which rates the safety of websites based on ratings received by other users of the plug-in.

Users rate websites on their ‘Trustworthiness’, ‘Vendor reliability’, ‘Privacy’ and ‘Child Safety’. Information about websites is also gathered from Compete, comments by users and through links from reliable sources (such as Digg, Lifehacker, Open Directory Project and Wikipedia).

Web of Trust sits alongside your navigation buttons, ensuring it has your attention, and should a website be cause for concern the button will change colour. Information is also integrated in webmail and search results, to ensure you won’t stumble across an unsafe website.

It currently has information regarding of about 21,000,000 websites based on feedback from the extension’s users. It can also be used as parental control, blocking children from websites not suitable for kids.

The website has flaws. It relies on a user spotting a phishing site before someone falls prey to it and naturally, intelligent scammers could trick it through rating their own site. Then again, I imagine this would rarely happen and even when it does, one would expect it to be quickly rectified.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/12/02/web-of-trust-collaborative-online-security/feed/ 7