Web Of Trust / Esa Suurio / Against Intuition / MyWOT.com Ingenious Phishing/Identity Theft Operation by Master Criminal Esa Suurio Scamming Trusting People looking for internet security Helsinki Other

This post seems to be part of a campaign intended to harm WOT's reputation. There have been similar postings on two other Web sites, both claiming that WOT is a scam:

(((Redacted)))

(((Redacted)))

There was also a posting on Yahoo! Answers, but it has since been deleted.

If you're going to slam WOT like this, where is your proof? It stands to reason that if this were a scam, it would have been shut down years ago. Does Esa Suurio have a criminal record? Is there any evidence that he is selling users' information?

Show us the proof and perhaps we'll believe you.


CLICK here to see why Rip-off Report, as a matter of policy, deleted either a phone number, link or e-mail address from this Report.

WOT's privacy policy states clearly how any of your private info is handled. If anyone considering WOT's Firefox plugin comes here wondering about the truth, consider:

* I am a user of the product - not the owner, not an employee, no axe to grind
* Download the plugin and read their privacy policy for yourself
* The complaint from Huntsville AL did not sign his name
* Mozilla would've heard about this (were it true), severed ties with the company, etc
* To this day, Mozilla recommends the plugin.

Huntsville, why don't you answer this and Jeremy's valid point?

John Sears from Colorado

There's evidence and then there's "internet proof." Do I know what I say is true? Yes. Do I have evidence. Yes. Is that evidence on the internet. No. But the truth is the truth and I only speak the truth. If you have the time to actually dig through records, like for real and not in a Google hunt, you will reach the same conclusions I have.

Why does Firefox still allow MyWOT to run its scam? Simple. Ask yourself when the last time was you paid for the firefox software. Why do you people trust that these very rich people give away this stuff for free?

I admire your loyalty. But trust me, like so many others in this country, you loyalty is poorly placed. Think for yourself and you'll see the truth.

Huntsville,

Think for yourself?

Dude/Mam, I'm a successful business owner who stands on his feet and makes his own way every day. You don't know me so quit your ASSumptions.

Think for YOURself.

First of all, you cast ill of someone's name and reputation and call him a criminal with absolutely no facts to back it up and if you have them you've been asked to show your hand here. I say it again. Back it up.

You've not done so nor will you disclose your name. Easy to do such things while hiding behind an anonymous IP address on the internet. I'll won't call you names but such acts are cowardly.

Fess up or shut up.

The simple fact that someone does something for no charge is no evidence of criminality. To make such claims would indict every Church, Non-Profit and good hearted person in the world. You're nuts.

Please, I love how you guys think. Just because you have fun rating websites and feeling powerful about it does not mean the guy running it aint ripping you off. MyWOT is not a church, and it's not a non-profit. Esa Suurio is far from being a saint. No one who describes himself as an "entrepreneur" is doing anything for free. Believe you me, they are selling information. I shouldn't say it, but I know because I work for a company that actually BUYS this information from them. But that's all I'm saying because I need my job.

I can't believe you guys actually think some rich guy cares so much about people getting spam emails that he would sink hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money into a web site. If he really cared that much, he would lobby lawmakers to change laws to make spam illegal. Doing that is free if you're already rich and have connections which Esa Suurio does.

Insulting me with "ASSumptions" isn't going to change the fact you all are being duped, and the very thing you fear the most is hapening to you by the guy you trust the most. The best trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he doesn't exist.

Like most things on the internet, myWOT started out as a good idea. But now it's just a bunch of zealots who like the powerful feeling they get by rating sites down or up. Just read their forums and you'll see hundreds of threads asking people to rate a site red because they had one bad experience. And then everyone dogpiles on to do it like little lapdogs. Just look at what happened here. One person makes a claim about the site, and someone starts name calling. Why? Because they don't like their little game being spoiled. They don't want the power taken away. The fact is that there are thousands of legitimate sites rated red that did nothing wrong. Conversely, there are thousands of sites that are terrible that are unrated because the mob over there is too busy beating up on forums whose political opinions they disagree with. Any site that relies on its users to maintain a database is just asking for a mob mentality. Don't bother with this software - it's really useless.

You can slime but you can't hide. You've been nailed Huntsville and U know it.

Garbage in garbage out The white trash has been taken out.

John,

Thanks for proving my point! The mob mentality rules and you wish to bully anyone who disagrees with you. You can name call all you want, it doesn't change the fact that you guys are ruining the very site you cherish. If you would act responsibly then maybe the software wouldn't be so useless.

Deb

I agree with the original report and how people will blindly trust a service that says it is on your side. Well, I could say I'll be on your side and will you trust me? Probably not, so why do you just assume that MyWOT is trustworthy?

Esa Suurio is "moving on" and leaving his position as CEO of MyWOT. Why is that? Because the truth has been outted and he doesn't want his name to be soiled. I just want all his loyal followers to think about why he's all the sudden leaving his company? He's pretty much proving my point...

This is not a very helpful report to me, and I came here to mention my view.

I am a site administrator, developer and marketer. My task is to do the things necessary to prove that my company (a manufacturer of direct to consumer goods) is trust worthy and has the best interests of our customer in mind. One of the companies whom I was considering was the WOT community seal.

This seal is not cheap, and it opens us up to the comments of users on the WOT. At present we are under the radar enough to not be noticed one way or the other.

As I compare other security and site seal solutions on thing I notice that stands out about the WOT Seal is that it is indeed powered by a community, and therefore it's approvas must therefore be more relevant than an automated software check. It seems to me that it is the "big stick" that amazon and ebay holds over their vendors.

Now hold on, I'm not done yet...

This  is an important issue to my company because our reputation is on the line. There are less riskier things we could do then subject ourselves to community comments, but this might be the most trustworthy thing we could do as a company. It might help us prove that we are indeed who we say we are, we indeed honor our commitments, and we do indeed do what we say.

So I have been researching a number of these "seal" companies based on the criteria that is important to us as a company.

The weird thing is this: I can not find actual evidence to back up a claim one way or the other.

For example, this report makes claims about consumer privacy issues, but it is no different than the types of data raping that Google does to it's users on a daily basis (especially with the toolbar). They do it to "provide better search results" but than on the other hand WOT does it to "provide a safer internet". The collection of consumer data is nothing new *yawn*. Companies have been doing this since the beginning of the internet the moment that Log Files were analyzed. So it's more sophisticated now. Right. Time marches on.

The compiled user data is probably only useful to themselves. I get that they could probably sell it to someone, but logically who would be in the market for such data? The Government? Seems like Google would be a better source for that, and they could just subpoena it.

The way they seem to make money is by offering business that need to be recognized for trust a way to be accountable. I am not saying that's the best way, but it is A WAY. They want a good chunk of money from my company on an annual basis to be able to subject ourselves to the community of users.

That is the "scheme" of this business as far as I can tell. The users are being monetized and their content used. But to me this seems no different than other sites that are mostly built on user contributed content. Think Google, FaceBook, Twitter, etcetea.

So I cannot find any supporting evidence either for OR against this company. I don't find this report useful because I do not see any supporting documents, system reports. log files, or legal documents. All I see is someone who is mad at a specific company for actions that all the big internet players engage in. I am not saying that it's correct behavior, but I think it's a little naive to believe that the WOT is the only company leveraging user contributed data, and specific fingerprint data along with identity data.

Can you explain exactly what happened to bring you to this level of anger about the company? I find it hard to believe that the privacy issue is the issue that is really making you upset.

Maybe if you revealed the exact source of your frustration, that would provide the evidence I need to make my decision (and probably many others). Ranting about the use and sale of user data won't cut it. I find it hard to believe that you are taking this on as a social issue. I think something happened that lead you to this conclusion and you are not telling us what it is.

Here is the ONLY evidence I have found (positive or negative):

For information sake, a google page rank of 6 is super high. This is the end result of google's "importance ranking" of a site. The yahoo directory is a 7. Martha Stewart's site is a 6. (I just happened to check that earlier on an unrelated search)

Alexa Rank over three months is their position in traffic (estimated by Alexa) Google is 1, Yahoo is 4.  I make sites for a living and have not gotten close to 5,148

Ans so on....

Google Page Rank [?] Google PageRank (Google PR) is a patented method for measuring page importance on a scale from 0 - 10, where 10 is the highest. The PageRank algorithm analyzes the quality and quantity of links that point to a page.	6
Alexa 3 month Rank [?] Alexa traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). Some notes: Subdomains are not measured. Rank value is a position in the rating, so the lower value the better.	5,148   1,280
Compete.com rank [?] Using Compete community data (toolbar), Compete calculates and estimates total traffic and rank of a sites, additionally calculating the number of unique U.S. visitors each month.	N/A
Quantcast rank [?] Quantcast Rank (QR), estimates the traffic volume of a particular web site or domain. The main differences from Alexa are that QR shows the traffic volume directly and so far it is oriented to the U.S. market only.	18,899
Netcraft rank [?] Netcraft rank is a site position in the "Most Visited Web Sites List", based on the site popularity among Netcraft toolbar users.	N/A
RSS subscribers	507 (Google Reader) (feed)
Linking information
On-Page links count	69 (nofollow : 3)
PR/Links ratio [?] PageRank devided by the links count (except "nofollow" links). Higher value means higher pagerank spreading with every link.	0.0909
Yahoo inbound links count	2,120
Yahoo indexed subpages count	1,937,879
Sites linking in (Alexa)	N/A
Del.icio.us	Saved by 585 people

While I don't have any information about WOT stealing people's information, here's my story...

In my opinion this is NOT a reliable program at all & has SERIOUS flaws, so to "osmos", you can draw your own conclusions from my story.

I, like you, used to trust WOT & I had it on my Fx. Then one day when I was in a group, Deborah from WOT started advertising their Web of Trust program.

2 people in the group were disrespectful to her & since I tend to protect people who are being persecuted for no reason I tried to protect her because I trusted WOT. Even when they showed us how some company was trying to bring WOT down, I didn't believe it. (I happen to be a loyal person plus I know how a posse online can try to bring down an innocent company.).

I started to talk to Deborah away from the group & inquire about their badge & seals.

She gave me pricing & I was this close to signing up.

Also at this time I went to look my company up on WOT & saw that it had a pretty healthy rating of 75, but there was one comment about us being on a blacklist, so I asked Deborah about it.

She said to contact the rater (which I still didn't know how to do) PLUS, she also told me to ask the forum to rate my site.

So I innocently went ahead & did that.

BIG MISTAKE!!!!

I was attacked by their guys left right & center. Even the BBB is more fair than WOT's so called community is.

They accused me of being a scam because of how much money a person could make from my program. Sure my site has strong sales copy, but I even had it toned down because the copywriters like to embellish & I won't allow that.

They accused another one of my sites that offers legal products of pretending to be a lawyer & suggested that clients go elsewhere for their legal help.

They attacked me because my domain is privatized & I don't give out my last name on my site because I wish to protect myself from dysfunctional people online. Doesn't matter that I have fully visible contact information & a toll free number.

They accused me of not knowing what I was doing because I didn't understand one of their acronyms. They accused me of hiding things because I don't tell people our cookie is put on their computer. (How many sites tell people about cookies? I haven't seen a site state that in years & I've been online full time since 1998 & a netrepreneur since 2002. Not to mention my clients tend to be VERY computer & internet illiterate & most of them they don't know a cookie from cookies & cream ice cream.) There has to be cookies because of logins & affiliate programs. Everyone knows that.

They ignored the great testimonials from my clients & then accused me of hiding them. LOL, they are right there on the site. I don't believe in showing off. I have humility. Yes the testimonials are there if you read the bloody site.

They didn't read anything but what they wanted to attack AND they didn't even listen to my audio that speaks volumes about how ethical I am.

A couple didn't like my industry & started giving me the 3rd degree about that too as if that makes ANY difference as to whether we are a professional ethical company which we are.

I tried to address their questions without getting very upset & every step of the way they ignored what I had to say.

They then proceeded to rank my site LOW & I went from a 75 down to a 59! PLUS someone wrote a comment not to trust my site.

Can you believe it????

All this because I listened to this salesperson Deborah & trusted her.

Had I just left my site as it was, regular honest people would have ranked my site as they saw it, not a bunch of control freaks who love their power & rip company's to shreds if they don't like what they see at first glance.

I asked Deborah to put my original ranking back & she wouldn't of course saying I should just address the forum's concerns.

I REFUSE to waste hours trying to prove to these judge & jury type cowboys that my site is professional & ethical. I already tried to address their concerns & give my point of view & they clearly think they know more than me. I don't like arguing. Back when I was insecure sure I'd argue & even now I can certainly give my point of view, I'm not afraid of that, but I could tell after the second round of talks that nothing I would say would change their minds.

It also became clear to me that they are the furthest thing from business people they can be. Based on how they talked, it sounds like some were just techies.

Had I known these weren't REAL people, I would NEVER have trusted them to rank my site fairly.

Now WOT is showing up with my name attached to it & people will not trust my site.

This is NOT a defamation campaign against WOT - web of trust. I am a real person with a real small company & I have just been brought down by WOT's program!

WOT is manipulative, the concept is very convinient for them they portray themselves as a Site with a good purpose but in fact they are wolfs dress as sheep.

Wot will show your site in red to get your attention and then get you to sign up, and then invite people to give good ratings which means more people signing up and more activity on the site.

Anyone with malicious and egotistic intentions could give a bad rating to any site they have never used and don't have any knowledge about.

Very unprofessional

 People who communicate as second graders and are hateful and disrespectful will bully honest site owners.

I was bullied by the following user names: Sad Story, and Wolff messing. Just by their screen names you can see this are evil people Sad people that don't realize they are being used by WOT because at the end the one making the big bucks selling the so called "Trust Seal" is WOT.

Dont Trust WOT, is not even child safe because children can find a porno web site that has been rated green due to manipulation.

If don't have, Who is nonsense here?

I have to agree with Michelle and a few others. I had a similar experience with (my)wot. Like her I went into the forum for help in resolving the issues. I was polite and even made changes to my site(s) that they recommended. I was then called a liar and like her even a scam. 

Once I realized that I didn't have hardly any trust in their website I rated their site poorly. My user name was immediately banned and my comment explaining the rating was removed. If they cannot take criticism how can they dish it out.

The fact is as others have said that the site is nothing more then a bully. The people on/in their forum delight in trying to ruin the reputation a good (perhaps even great) sites. 
I then removed the software I had downloaded.  Stay away from their site. It is not worth the hassle and certainly don't trust them.