| WOT Services | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer | WOT Services |
| Initial release | 2007 |
| Type | browser add-on |
| Website | www |
WOT Services is the developer ofMyWOT (also known asWOT andWeb of Trust), an online reputation and Internet safety service which shows indicators of trust about existing websites. The confidence level is based both on user ratings and on third-partymalware,phishing,scam andspamblacklists.[1] The service also providescrowdsourced reviews, about to what extent websites are trustworthy, and respect user privacy, vendor reliability and child safety.[2]
Its website user interface is available in six languages, namely, English, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Russian. Its website uses machine translation on the domain name scorecard webpages for logged-in users/commenters.
WOT Services was founded in 2006 by Sami Tolvanen and Timo Ala-Kleemola, who wrote the MyWOT software as post-graduates at theTampere University of Technology inFinland. They launched the service officially in 2007, with Esa Suurio as CEO. Suurio was replaced in November 2009, and both founders left the company in 2014.[3]
In 2009, MySQL founderMichael Widenius invested in WOT Services and became a member of the board of directors.[4] WOT Services is no longer a portfolio company of Widenius's venture capital firm, OpenOcean.vc.[5]
WOT Services has partnerships withMail.ru,Facebook, hpHosts,Legit Script,Panda Security,Phish tank,GlobalSign andTRUSTe.[6][7][8][9][10]
By November 2013, WOT Services had over 100 million downloads.[11]
A 2016Norddeutscher Rundfunk investigation revealed that WOT Services sold user activity data collected from its apps andbrowser extensions to third parties in violation of theprivacy policies of theapp stores on which the software was distributed.
In 2016, it was revealed that WOT Services had made money by collecting browsing history data from its users and selling that usage data; it said that it anonymized the data before selling it.[12]
In November 2016, a German state media investigation found that WOT Services had secretly collected personal user details and sold or licensed this information to unidentified third-party businesses and entities fordata monetization purposes. This activity breached the privacy rules and guidelines set by several browsers. As a result, the browser add-on was involuntarily removed fromMozilla Firefox's add-on store, and voluntarily removed from other browsers' add-on/extension stores. WOT was eventually reinstated.
On November 1, 2016, German public broadcasting stationNDR reported the results of an investigation by in-house journalists, showing that WOT collected, recorded, analyzed and sold user-related data to third parties.[13][14][15] The data obtained was traceable to WOT and could be assigned to specific individuals, despite WOT's claim that user data was anonymized.[16] The NDR investigative journalism report was based on freely available sample data, and revealed that sensitive private information of more than 50 users could be retrieved.[14] The information included websites visited, account names and email addresses, potentially revealing user illnesses, sexual preferences and drug consumption. The journalists also reconstructed a media company's confidential revenue data, and details about an ongoing police investigation.[13]
German media contacted WOT Services with the results of the investigation prior to publication of the report. WOT declined to comment on the findings.[13][14]
A few days after the news story aired, Mozilla removed the browser add-on from theFirefox add-on store.[17][18]WOT subsequently removed its browsing tool for other browsers, includingChrome andOpera.[19][12][20] The WOT "Mobile Security & Protection"mobile app was removed fromGoogle Play, approximately one week after the extension was removed from the Google Chrome extension store.
In a blog post published on December 19, 2016, WOT Services stated that they had upgraded their browser extension, and released it in the Google Chrome extension gallery. The upgraded version included "several major code updates in order to protect our user's privacy and an opt-out option from the user Settings, for users who do not wish to share data with us but still want to have easy access to WOT."[21] In February 2017, Mozilla reinstated the MyWOT browsing tool in the Firefox add-on store.[22]
WOT Services offers an add-on for web browsers includingFirefox,Google Chrome,Opera,Internet Explorer andBaidu.[12] The extension rates websites based on their reputation score and provides end users with a red, yellow, or green indicator, with red meaning that the site has a poor reputation score.[19]
In February 2011, a lawsuit inFlorida (United States) was filed against WOT and some of its forum members, demanding that WOT remove certain website ratings and associated comments cautioning about phishing scams.[23] The court dismissed the case withprejudice. InGermany, somepreliminary injunctions were issued by courts, to delete feedback.[24]