You’d probably want to know if you can trust a site with those information. Website reputation services in theory speed up the time it takes to come to a conclusion. Instead of having to search for information on search engines you could use their ratings to assess a website’s reputation more easily.

Experienced Internet users know that it is often not sufficient to use just one service for that. These services can be manipulated easily, for instance with fake user comments and ratings.

Webutation is a meta service that lists ratings from multiple services when user look up domain names on the website. The reputation service includes its own review service as well as the site’s Google Safebrowsing, Website Antivirus, Web of Trust and G-Rated / Child Safety rating. These ratings are then used to calculate the Webutation score.

You also see the site’s Google Pagerank and Alexa rank listed there. Some entries have an Info link next to them. If you hover your mouse cursor over them you will see additional information about the rating.

The only other option that you have is to switch from Rating to Twitter Buzz to see some of the recent Twitter messages that references the domain name.

I personally like Webutation as it combines the rating of multiple reputation and security services. It is still recommended to rely on other sources, e.g. a manual web search for issues related to the domain.

A Firefox add-on with mixed reviews is available as well. It basically displays the webutation rating of the active website in the browser’s toolbar.

Are you using reputation services? If so, which is your favorite?

G Data CloudSecurity is a web browser protection plugin that is compatible with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. The plugin, which is also part of all commercial G Data security products, scans web pages for malicious activity and warns users if malicious activities have been discovered during the scan. Malicious activities include phishing and malware downloads, among others.

CloudSecurity displays a warning intermediary page that informs the user about the findings. The page contains a warning sign, short general explanation and options to continue loading the attack site and purchasing a copy of G Data.

One problem that experienced users may have with this approach is that G Data CloudSecurity is not disclosing exactly why a website has been blocked. The explanation reads:

Due to security reasons, G Data CloudSecurity has denied access to this website. The website is either infected or a phishing site.

The lack of detailed explanations might be reason enough for experienced users to select a different web protection plugin instead.

The plugin submits web site information to the cloud, where they are analyzed and returned to the browser. There is no visible delay in the opening of websites after the plugin has been installed.

Users should run a self test on first start which they can do from the plugin’s context menu.

Here it is also possible to disable the plugin for a time period. The plugin appears as a toolbar in Internet Explorer and Firefox. There does not seem to be a way to hide the toolbar in Internet Explorer. A click on the X icon of the toolbar leads to a prompt where it can be disabled and thus removed.

The always visible toolbar and the fact that explanations are general and not custom for each blocked website might keep most experienced users from using the product. Users who do not mind can download and install G Data CloudSecurity directly from the developer website. The program supports all versions of Internet Explorer from version 6 on, and Firefox 3 with support for Firefox 4 planned.

The service rates websites in the categories trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety. Web of Trust today announced a cooperation with Facebook, that could multiple the company’s popularity and user base in short time.

Facebook has integrated Web of Trust’s reputation ratings into their security system. From now on, all outgoing links on Facebook will be checked by Web of Trust to protect users from accessing malicious or dangerous websites.

Facebook users may see an intermediary page when they click on an outgoing link on the social networking site.The notification reads:

Sorry

The link you are trying to visit has been classified as potentially abusive by Facebook partners. To learn more about staying safe on the Internet, visit our Facebook’s security page. Please also read Wikipedia articles on malware and phishing.

Website reported for spam, malware, phishing or other abuse. This warning is provided in collaboration with Web of Trust. Learn More.

Facebook users can ignore the warning to visit the page, get additional information about the warning by clicking on the learn more link, or go back to the page they were previously on.

All links that have been rated as untrustworthy by Web of Trust will show this or a similarly looking notification message.

The warnings are currently added on Facebook US. Other countries will follow next week after which the new security system will be available globally.

The addition of an outgoing link scanner improves security for Facebook users considerably, especially since there was no system in place before. Facebook has now added a powerful tool to their site that checks all outgoing links to warn users of potentially dangerous websites.

The integration of Facebook should give Web of Trust a noticeable boost. It is likely that the install base will rise significantly shortly after the roll out of the security system on Facebook.

This will have an effect on reports and ratings as well, considering that an increase in users should increase those numbers as well.

Interested users can read the announcement over at the Web of Trust blog. Facebook has not made an announcement yet on their website. It is likely that this is going to follow soon.

Sites like Web of Trust allow users to share information about phishing sites, but scores of similar tools exist and as it would be counter-productive for each to maintain their own database of phishing sites.

PhishTank centralises phishing reports and allows developers to use their data free-of-charge in their own applications, with manual or automatic download enabled (although the latter requires a free API key).

PhishTank offers a service a lot of web users will use without even realising it. Whilst certain tools might submit their data to PhishTank too, you can help your fellow web users and fight phishers through submitting data directly to PhishTank.

With a free registered account, reports can be submitted through a web interface or through email. It is extremely easy to send the next phishing attempt that manages to get through your spam filters to PhishTank. Providing you have that email address registered with them, all you have to do it forward it to phish (at) phishtank.com .

Whilst it might not directly benefit you to do so, you are helping users who might help you too. If nothing else, you are keeping your credit card interest rate down marginally, as your bank has to pay less out to compensate phishing victims!

Multiple services are available in the other website information categories as well. The best part is that these information can be easily accessed. Options are to display a toolbar in Firefox that displays some of the information right away and offers one-click access to everything else. Not everyone wants to use a toolbar on the other hand. That’s why there is also the possibility to right-click on a link to display the information in a overlay window. An overall rating is displayed on top of each category that is computed from the results of all single results.

The add-on does not slow down the web browsing experience noticeably.

Overview of the services offered by Link Extend:

• Safety – Web of Trust, McAfee SiteAdvisor, Web Security Guard, Browser Defender, Norton Safe Web, DrWeb, Compete, Google Safe Browsing
• KidSafe – Web of Trust, Alexa, Browser Defender, Web Security Guard, Google SafeSearch, ICRA
• Ethics – Scryve, Knowmore, CorporateCritic
• Site Traffic – Alexa, Quantcast, Compete, Statbrain
• Thumbnails – GooglePreview, MyThumbnail, Websnapr, Thumbshot

Link Extend comes with extensive settings that can be configured in the add-on’s options. This includes removing services that are not needed, configuring how and where thumbnails are displayed, setting up context menu entries, configuring search engine options that include hiding unsafe options, toolbar options and if suspicious or unsafe websites should be added to the Firefox browsing history.

Link Extend is compatible with several search engines including Google Search or Yahoo Search. It might take some time to configure the Firefox add-on properly but the process should be worth it for many users who like to be on the safe side when surfing the Internet.

WOT, which stands for Web Of Trust, is an add-on for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer that increases the Internet security of the web browser. The main purpose of the add-on is to scan and rank all links in popular search engines and other websites to give the user an indication of the dangers of each listed website.

Each link on supported websites will be ranked with a single colored icon which can be expanded into a detailed view when hovering with the mouse over it. Websites are ranked from very poor to excellent in the four categories trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety.

The Internet Explorer add-on will display a popup if the user clicks on a link with a poor rating which works as a second warning. It is then up to the user to ignore the warning and visit the website, skip the website or check some user reviews on the Web of Trust website first.

Web of Trust should not obviously be the only means of Internet Security but it can be helpful especially for inexperienced users who might get into troubles when visiting unsafe websites. The Internet Explorer add-on is actually not exclusive to Internet Explorer as a version for Firefox is also available for download.

Safe Web Browsing: WOT and How to Use It

Many users are familiar with WOT (Web of Trust) featured for Firefox and Internet Explorer and it certainly has been mentioned in posts. To take full advantage of WOT; you need to know how to use it. This may seem simple to the advanced user, but it is unfamiliar territory to the user who is new to browsing safety. Some anti-malware suites take care of safe web browsing and many do not. If you want to be certain that a website is “safe”, WOT is a great way to do this. “Safe means that the site is clear of malware, spyware, adware, etc. It is hard to tell just by looking if a site is unsafe or safe. This will give you the ability to discern and make appropriate choices accordingly.

WOT in its completely functional format is available for Firefox and Internet Explorer. Safari and Opera versions are available yet they are admittedly incomplete at this time. It may be added to Google Chrome as well. For this demonstration, the focus is on Internet Explorer.
Start by downloading the WOT add-on for Internet Explorer.

You will then be requested to register to activate all features. This is where you will have to agree to the Terms of Service and License Agreement once again. This may seem odd, but it is the way Licensing Agreements go. Depending on your system and any programs running at the time, this could take a few minutes to complete. After you register, you may see that it is taking a long time to confirm. If this is the case, restart the browser and you will see that WOT has been installed on Internet Explorer. IE9 is used in this example.

You will see this circular icon in the upper right corner of the IE browser. This is WOT. When you go to a website, click on this to see the ratings. For example, here the user navigated to desktopnexus.com. This is a free site for desktop backgrounds. The ratings indicated that it is safe.

This confirms general user reports that this site is reliable and safe: free of malware and thus trustworthy. Now we can take a look at another random site and see its ratings. Please note that this is purely demonstrative and not intended to incriminate any site or confirm that it is a dangerous site. This is merely to show the functions of WOT in Internet Explorer.

The author will go as far as to state that this is a free music download site that is at the top of Google’s search. Immediately, this warning came up. Upon further examination with certain anti-malware software, several threats were identified. You can click the View rating details and comments button to see the ratings:

When you see this, navigate away from the site and find a more trusted site. WOT works without instigation. Generally, if you do not see a “WARNING” pop up, the site is safe. Click the circular WOT icon shown earlier to see the ratings of any given site to be sure. Enjoy safe browsing and avoid problems that could compromise the safety of your computer.

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.