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WoT's up with Web of Trust?
"Your browsing history may have been sold already
By Martin Brinkmann on November 1, 2016
Add-on companies are selling the browsing history of millions of users to third-parties according to a report that aired on German national TV.
Reporters of Panorama managed to gain access to a large data collection that contained the browsing history of roughly 3 million German Internet users.
The data was collected by companies that produce browser extensions for various popular browsers such as Chrome and Firefox.
Panorama did mention only one add-on, Web of Trust or WoT, but did not fail to mention that the data was collected by multiple browser extensions."
By coincidence, I was trying to download WOT today from the author's site, and I can't find the green download link anywhere on the site, using any browser on Win 7 or Win 10 systems.
Something is up ...
ky331
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November 5th, 2016 10:00
Web of Trust (WOT) Add-on taken down by Chrome & Firefox http://news.thewindowsclub.com/web-of-trust-wot-add-on-taken-down-86981/
The Web Of Trust (WOT) add-on was removed silently by the popular web browsers Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox soon after it was reported on German media that the add-on ‘Web Of Trust’ collects and sells the browsing history of users to third-parties, without even bothering to anonymize the user data.
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Remark: I (still) have [an older version of] WOT installed in my browsers. When I perform a search for updates in FF (and PaleMoon), it no long finds any updates.
RoHe
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November 5th, 2016 18:00
Can't trust anybody anymore... :emotion-41:
joe53
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November 6th, 2016 15:00
According to wikipedia, both founders left WOT in 2014, and ownership has changed hands at least once. " ... its current ownership is unclear and not disclosed on the website."
en.wikipedia.org/.../WOT_Services
This by itself, along with the fact that even their own website no longer offers the add-on for download, is sufficient grounds for me to remove it from my browsers, and withdraw the endorsement link for WOT in my signature.
RoHe
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November 6th, 2016 17:00
Makes you wonder what took somebody so long to realize WOT was selling data.
And who else is selling our data...? :emotion-40:
ky331
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November 7th, 2016 04:00
As it happens, I haven't updated my WOT since 2013: I'm using 2013-09-02 in IE, and 2013-11-18 in FF and PM. [No, I had no knowledge of the company's sale, nor "lapse" in privacy policy.] So I have no idea if these older versions were collecting data on my, or if that only happened in more recent years (under the new ownership).
For me, the bottom line is that my WOT still works... it effectively warns me (or blocks me, depending on my settings), from sites it believes to be malicious.
WOT was never perfect... there were a few warnings about sites I believed to be safe... and so sometimes, I would override the warning and "live dangerously" --- especially if I was in a sandbox. I've always considered it just one of many tools (layers of protection) available to me... it wasn't an "absolute".
That being the case, I intend to keep it around --- since I practice "safe-surfing", it's rare that I get a warning from ANY of my tools. But if it happens to save me even once, it's worth it.
joe53
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November 7th, 2016 11:00
A perfectly reasonable decision, ky.
There's a lot of FUD around this unfolding topic out there, which is based solely on a single report from a German media investigation. Yet I see that Sami Tolvanen, one of the original authors of WoT, tweeted:
"What happens when venture capitalists are left in charge? Nice investigative journalism by @sveckert et al."
Meanwhile, MyWot has finally posted a response in their forum, with some interesting replies:
www.mywot.com/.../70818-to-the-wot-community
I'm hoping to reinstate Wot, which I too found useful, once all the smoke clears.