WOT, also known as Web of Trust, has launched the world’s first online tool for reputation rating. This new community-based browser add-on allows you to assess the trustworthiness of websites. The Web of Trust’s community’s new website, including free download, can be found at www.mywot.com.

The concept of the WOT is fairly simple: WOT community members exchange their knowledge about web sites by using a user interface. Membership is free and you don’t have to register. You can submit website ratings but it’s not required.

The Web of Trust has been in beta testing for over a year now, and the community has acquired reputation data on over 16 million sites. WOT uses four components to rate a website’s reputation: trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy, and child safety. They then enrich the data they get from the users with information from trusted sources such as listings of phishing sites.

The WOT system processes ratings and produces a reputation rating for each web site. Any attempts to manipulate the reputation data are effectively countered using algorithms. Once WOT has been downloaded, checking a site’s reputation is easy. A WOT reputation icon is displayed next to each link on search engine results pages. WOT supports Google and most other major search engines. According to Web of Trust, 99 percent of current users surveyed found WOT useful and 98 percent would recommend it to a friend.

Behind the community, there is a team developing the WOT service. Headed by Esa Suurio, Against Intuition Inc. focuses on developing and providing software and services for the WOT community, and promoting the community’s goals. Against Intuition was founded in Finland in 2006 by two visionary postgraduate students, Timo Ala-Kleemola and Sami Tolvanen, who are now engaged in further system development with a group of talented software developers, designers, and database administrators. It’s no coincidence that WOT comes from the country that repeatedly has been named one of world’s least corrupt countries.