Scary protection

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I am trying to get some idea of how aggressive current malware protection is. Tonight I ran a search that gave me the most useful Word tutorial site I have seen for some time, and after getting solid information from an assortment of pages a ferocious Web of Protection screen flashed on, preventing me from even reading it. Some time ago Kaspersky flagged a small (dozen or so) collection of lullabies because of a database. I don’t know whether it meant that they were in a database or they were putting me into a database.

I don’t even recall opting into Web of Protection, which appears to be some sort of online protection, and I think I have Parental Control turned off in Kaspersky but I get it anyway. Are these people using heuristics (Recipester is the name of the site I was getting such great data from, and I was going to link it to a post in the Lounge) or do they have hard data that there is a genuine risk?

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I have never heard of Web of Protection. I do use, as many others do, Web of Trust (WOT).I would be suspect of Web of Protection. Even WOT allows me to choose to go to a suspect site if I wish. It first informs me of a suspect site. When I try to search for Web Of Protection I get this site.

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I have never heard of Web of Protection. I do use, as many others do, Web of Trust (WOT).I would be suspect of Web of Protection. Even WOT allows me to choose to go to a suspect site if I wish. It first informs me of a suspect site. When I try to search for Web Of Protection I get this site.

Yes, it was WOT; I had the name wrong. (I googled it with correct name after encountering it, but had the name wrong in the post.) I’ll putter about to see if I can get a better idea of what the astounding screen was for, but I didn’t know whether to start scanning the machine with every malware detector in the book or what to do. I do know that there is a scam people use to intentionally get a legitimate site blacklisted, although in this case the name of the site might be sufficient to trigger a warning. The thing that shocked me was the shock value of the WOT screen, which was enough to blow you off your chair, and I think it excessive in an application that will inevitably give false positives.

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I would guess that WOT has a list of URLs that it proactively blocks based on reports that the site in the past was an attack site, phishing site, or distributed malware. Unless you passed through the warning screen, you probably did not get to the dangerous goods.

Please note that malware happens to good sites with weak security. Although we like to base our trust on good brand and past experience, those are exactly the sites that cybercriminals most want to exploit. Accordingly, because you never know when a site has been breached, I take the proactive warnings seriously.

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Web of Trust (WOT) is NOT just about malware. WOT often warns me about web sites that send out lots of spam / junk mail. WOT is trying to warn you that the web site will mis-use your email address – maybe sell it to spammers.

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Web of Trust (WOT) is NOT just about malware. WOT often warns me about web sites that send out lots of spam / junk mail. WOT is trying to warn you that the web site will mis-use your email address – maybe sell it to spammers.

The point that I miss in this discussion is the way the WOT database is filled and by who.
Years ago when WOT was launched I enthusiastic subscribed to it. But after a year I have abandoned it.
WOT works (or worked ?? I don’t know) like Wiki, everybody is giving his/her opinion and most votes count. Many users abused WOT to impose their political and moral standards. Like the Chinese government they used WOT to censor all capitalistic, globalist, etc sites. So at a certain point WOT was more like a political parental control than of a warning for malware and privacy-violation. I hope they succeeded to get over this starting problems. But I left.
Can anybody tell more about this ?
best
ferdinand

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Hi Peter :

To “confirm” any WOT “Warning”, would recommend using the M86
Security FREE URL Analysis Tool, available at
http://www.m86security.com/resources/url-analysis.asp and/or
the FREE Exploit Prevention Labs Online Web Safety Scan at
http://linkscanner.explabs.com/linkscanner/default.aspx

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Hi Peter :

To “confirm” any WOT “Warning”, would recommend using the M86
Security FREE URL Analysis Tool, available at
http://www.m86securi…rl-analysis.asp and/or
the FREE Exploit Prevention Labs Online Web Safety Scan at
http://linkscanner.e…er/default.aspx

These are new to me and they both look like dandy links.

As for spam, both Outlkook and Kasperski seem to do a fine job of filtering it or warning you, at least until it is time to renew your Kasperski subscription, at which point the floodgates open, and I am reminded every time I so much as open an application that my Kasperski subscription is about to expire. They flag all spam but their own, it seems, and this time around one of my two subscriptions will be allowed to expire. They are their own worst enemies in that department.

As for WOT it is the visual violence of the warning screen that I object to. Surely there is no need to give you such a jolt as to make you think your computer has been hijacked already and is about to go up in a puff of smoke.

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As for WOT it is the visual violence of the warning screen that I object to. Surely there is no need to give you such a jolt as to make you think your computer has been hijacked already and is about to go up in a puff of smoke.

I believe this warning has evolved over time. The average person tends to ignore warnings until asaulted by the warning. I tend to stay away from sites that pop up the WOT warning, so consequently do not see it a lot, and am very happy when it jolts me into awarness. Sometimes when a person starts a lot of surfing you get into a state (it used to be called velocitized when driving) that you do need to be jolted to come back to total awareness. The links Robin provided seem to be good means to check on sites, but in this case you would already need the site and plug it in to get a warning. This will not work for the surfer who hits upon an untrustworthy site by accident while doing their surfing.

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WOT (Web of Trust) was very useful when a S_C_A_M email was enticing me to upgrade my Skype program. The address looked legit but WOT saved me!

The email purported to be from Skype Support and was entitled “Download New Skype VoIP Software 2011 – More Free Talks”
After a bit of sales talk a link was given:- S-C-A-M Site BEWARE this is a S-C-A-M SITE. DO NOT Download anything from it!

So, WOT with its Scare Tactics certainly saved me!!!

BTW, I tried to advise Skype but first it is very hard to find an email address, and even then they showed little interest in the S-C-A-M.

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I too subscribed to WOT several years ago and still I use it but I decided to become an active member so I might help the process. Members are asked to rate sites and at least part of the decision to put a site in a specific category is based on these ratings. Most of the time this is no problem but I did find a site that gave a warning which I ignored. Looking through the site I found the only problems were politically motivated negative reviews. After a note to the WOT staff the warning was lifted…

What I am trying to say is it is a great tool which would be even better if each of us would support it as active securtiy minded members.

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I view WOT the same way I view my GPS. A GPS is a great tool, but no substitute for paper maps and your own common sense. WOT is the same thing. It can help alert you to something potentially bad. But to get the most out of it, you need to have your wits about you and a bit of common sense. I know of several sites that are perfectly fine to visit, but WOT gives a warning or low rating simply because some surfers don’t like the site’s management or way of doing things.

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One reason I hold WOT in disdain.
Submissions should always be rigorously screened by trained personnel to a very specific set of security concerns and not by the whims of the subjective masses.

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Submissions should always be rigorously screened by trained personnel to a very specific set of security concerns and not by the whims of the subjective masses.

Sounds like we have a volunteer! Way to go Clint. I’m sure everyone will appreciate and completely agree with your rigorous screening.

WOT may not be perfect, but I have yet to find anything as good at the same price.

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I pulled out of WOT for the same reason that Clint holds it in disdain. There appears to be no security peer review of website ratings. I know of a website called “The Christian Left” that has been bombarded through WOT with negative ratings by those on the so called Christian Right. This was done not for security purposes, i.e. excessive spam or being infected with a virus, but because these so called Christian Right people did agree with “The Christian Left” website or didn’t believe that “The Christian Left” website had a right to exist. Such political censorship does not constitute website security and should be forbidden.

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I personally use the WOT and LinkExtend add-ons as quick-glance web site rating tools. They are there in the toolbar and you can pop-down a menu in each to read the full site report. LinkExtend uses WOT as one of its rating services, along with Google, McAfee Site Advisor, Browser Defender, etc. WOT is a crowd-sourcing rating tool with all of its problems and perhaps benefits.

A site I knew was great had low numbers of ratings in its WOT report so a few user/raters could swing the rating unfairly, perhaps one of that vendor’s competitors. I rated it well, contacted the vendor, process proceeded where WOT and disgruntled users were contacted, issues resolved, and the rating updated to green.

Similarly, I find many crowd-source folks in the Site Advisor reports complaining about security software company McAfee too easily giving green ratings on its Site Advisor pages. Now, I believe the community resources are not sufficiently self-cleaning and it may be the case that folks see bad ratings, include a comment about bad ratings, padding the bad rating while the vendor may have cleaned their site of risks and truly gained a green rating by working with McAfee. But, I have seen McAfee’s own report details finding trojans on the site and it still gets a green rating, which is a concern.

Both WOT and LinkExtend add-ons, along with our educated browsing behavior, can help to keep us, our family and friends safe and secure.

By the way, the WOT behavior that the original poster referred to is WOT dropping a “WARNING!” screen over the site page when you visit. There are buttons to say something like ‘continue unprotected’ and ‘get me out of here’ and, I believe, a link to a report on the site. You can change this setting. Finding it is not that easy. Here are the steps:

1) in the Firefox toolbar area is the WOT circle icon. Pop down its menu and select “Settings” (top right in my browser.)
2) You will be taken to the WOT Settings page on mywot.com (I don’t know if you have to be a registered user, as I am, for access to this.)
3) Select the “Warnings” tab.
4) At the bottom of the right side under “Customize your level of protection”, you will see a checkbox, “Show only notifications of warnings”, which is unchecked by default. Check it. Scroll down and click the “Apply Settings” button.

Now, instead of getting the scary “drop sheet” for red-rated site warnings, you will see the WOT “ribbon” warning just under your toolbar. (You still need to pay attention, of course.)

Good luck and safe browsing.

Paul

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I have used WOT for some time and have found warnings for sites which I know are OK. The warnings seem to be prevalent against a particular political or religious slant although I suppose if I were of the opposite persuasion and went to those sites it might be the same there. Even technical and ratings/review sites are warned about which I have gone to anyway and they’ve been fine. It’s getting to the point that I’m not trusting WOT so much any more because the ratings seem to be selected by personal preference rather than objectively.

I am pretty paranoid about these types of things so taking a warning lightly by is a big deal for me.

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I have used WOT for some time and have found warnings for sites which I know are OK. The warnings seem to be prevalent against a particular political or religious slant although I suppose if I were of the opposite persuasion and went to those sites it might be the same there. Even technical and ratings/review sites are warned about which I have gone to anyway and they’ve been fine. It’s getting to the point that I’m not trusting WOT so much any more because the ratings seem to be selected by personal preference rather than objectively.

I am pretty paranoid about these types of things so taking a warning lightly by is a big deal for me.

I agree with much of what you said. I still use WOT–but with a grain of salt. Sometimes I suspect that positive ratings (or comments) are given to unsafe sites by the website owners, employees, etc., and bad ratings and comments are given to safe sites by competitors, people of opposing beliefs, etc. When I see ratings on sites that I know are not true, I do take the time to submit my own rating and I state why I gave that specific rating. I also add that WOT is only reliable if the ratings are accurate, so WOT needs to do their part and confirm site ratings; because if they’re not reliable, WOT will cease to be useful to anyone. They also need to ban users who give false ratings. I’m sure they will find these users giving poor ratings to similar sites, which should help identify them easily.

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I agree with Clint and Bill that some politically active sites (on both sides of the spectrum) get low ratings that are not appropriate. The one’s I’ve seen, though, only have the icon color go orange or red and not the major warning. The primary reason that I use this is to catch my misspellings on normal sites (yahoo, youtube, etc.) As we know, some of the common misspellings are owned by nefarious people / organizations and the major warning the WOT puts up prevents me from ever having to see them.

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I NEVER got wot..anyone with an ax to grind or wants to cause dissent in the ranks so to speak can input their negative mark,,so hoonose which is reality and which is someone’s fantasy.

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I NEVER got wot..anyone with an ax to grind or wants to cause dissent in the ranks so to speak can input their negative mark,,so hoonose which is reality and which is someone’s fantasy.

I agree with you, WOT is too reliant on the opinions and/or malice of the unwashed masses, rather than trained security analysts. If any other security program produced the same level of false positives it would be deemed malware.

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I do not get that scam warning with WOT when going to K9WebProtection site.

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I totally agree. WOT needs to do more to ensure the ratings are correct and not skewed by various factions. They do a fine job overall, but there is so much more to be done in this regard, particularly when it comes to safe/secure websites and sites that are spewing malware cocktails.

It’s nice to see whether a site is child safe in general terms, but the biggest issues I worry about are safety/security of the website results in searches and in various sites like wikipedia, etc. where WOT also works.

I agree, they need to ban users who give false ratings, particularly false ratings that could get a child hurt, or compromise the safety/security of a computer.

Since McAfee bought out the ONLY really good, really low impact and at the time, the only truely free way to receive Advisories while searching, etc. (SiteAdvisor which I helped to beta test, as many did), it has been really sad in that field. Plus, McAfee gave back a basically watered down free version that was virtually worthless. WOT is one of the few, if any left that is free or even donation ware.

I have donated to great tools, like NoScript, etc. I would be willing to donate to WOT as well if they were doing as good a job as they could.

Personally, I really think that browser makers could do something more to help with search results (maybe a built in security rating system of their own, that even include the ads that are on search engine pages) and for results on webpages like wikipedia, etc. Like WOT does, but be more geared to true safety and security.

I also would like to say, that I feel that the IE version of WOT bundled with BingBar is a cheap trick. You have to download the BingBar regardless, and then decline the BingBar if you don’t want it installed, and it is not very clear for new users.

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