Safe online browsing - stay away from threats that your internet security software can't identify
By psf
All of us are using some kind of Anti virus and Internet security software to stay away from the threats of spyware, spam, trojans, viruses etc. And most of our web browsers have built in anti spam or virus program. These tools and programs will certainly help us to have a safe browsing.
However what about the threats like phishing, bad reputation and customer experience, cheating, age inappropriate content for children etc? Our automated security tools would be a failure on these aspects. I had many situations where I really felt whether I should sign-up with a website, enter my credit card number or not. You too probably had gone through similar situations. The website mywot.com really comes helpful in such situation. Even though the ratings shown by mywot.com about a website may not be 100% accurate, this can be a strong pointer to the reputation and trustworthiness of the website.
WOT (Web of Trust)
As per WOT “Web of Trust (WOT) is a crowd-sourced enhancement to online security whose unique protection against threats comes primarily from human input. WOT can identify what automated security technologies are unable to: bad customer experience, phishing and age-inappropriate content for children are examples of online threats that require human input.”
“WOT calculates a website’s reputation based on user ratings and reliable third-party trusted sources, such as listings of malware sites. WOT’s sophisticated algorithms identify and eliminate manipulation.”
To test a website using WOT, just go to mywot.com, enter the website address in the field provided and click “Check now”.
They have also an add-on tool, which can be installed and integrated with our web browsers. By using this add-on we can easily check reputation and trustworthiness of a website based on millions of users’ experience. Also we can rate the website based on our experience.
DomainTools
Adding to this, we can also use domaintools.com to have a basic idea about a website's reputation. Though this site is not meant for the purpose of what WOT does, using this website we can check WHOIS record of a website which shows information like: Domain registration address, phone number, registration date, website traffic, Alexa rank, visitors by country, visitors by city and many more. Most of the reputed and good websites should be having proper data for all these attributes hence would help us to estimate the site legitimacy some extend.
Check Hubpages WHOIS data using domaintools.com from this link http://whois.domaintools.com/hubpages.com
I hope this hub will help you to have a safe browsing next time.
Comments
Thanks Phil
This is a good hub, but it's also just common sense.... Wot is a good second opinion if u want to double check security on some things, but when in comes to putting credit card information/ very personal information online, I would be careful, so getting this second opinion, and maybe even another one from a friend, is great... But if your really worried, try to stay to major corporation websites such as amazon, best buy, apple, giant, etc.... These are trusted, and have secure networks for people that put in their personal information. The places where people get scammed he most are minor websites, and graphic websites that also usually give viruses, Trojans, or spamware....
Phil Plasma 10 months ago
I have only ever shopped at well known and trusted websites so I haven't really had to worry too much about payments and such. Good hub though, earning you a useful.