InformAction Forums

Hi!

I have a suggestion to add option to allow scripts globally on all WOT (Web Of Trust addon for Firefox) safe sites.
It would be a nice future for all grandparets computers (they usually don't want to bother with unblocking every script by hand, they evey don't usually know what that is).
It would be similar to "allow all scripts globally" option, but much safer.

I understand the idea, but the question is, what score is considered "safe"? WOT uses numerical averages from 0-100. Is 80 safe? 70?

Another issue is "ballot-box stuffing". Sites have an incentive to get good reviews posted (by employees, friends, etc.), and competitors may get bad reviews posted for that site or product. WOT should be used only as one more data point, and it's more important to read the reviews than to go blindly by numerical score.

Here's a good example:http://forums.informaction.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8462. It's a long thread that doesn't need to be read, but the pertinent post is this one.

Checking just now, the mywot score is lower than when that thread occurred, possibly because of publicity from that thread. But when I first checked it, IIRC it was in the 70s or so. The older reviews were favorable. But just reading the first two (most recent) set off alarms.

Suggestions: Read SOME SITES YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO ALLOW, and perhaps mark them as Untrusted on grandparents' machine, which means that they'll never even show in the main menu.

Same with List of scripts for which NS runs surrogate, which you can safely mark as Untrusted, because the Surrogate Script will always run, thus not breaking the page. And ask them to read NoScript Quick Start Guide, and FAQ: "What Is A Trusted Site?".

Most home users, especially novices like your folks, tend to have a pretty standard list of sites they visit: e-mail, news, shopping, finance, etc. If you configure those sites *once* for them, that should be a big help.

It's certainly attractive to try to automate trust decisions (and this is hardly the first time it's been brought up), but unfortunately, in the ever-changing world of the Internet, the most crucial component is the one at the keyboard.

Also let grandparents know of this forum, so that if they have questions after reading the above material, they can post here.

(I sympathize. All of my family, and most of my RL friends, are non-tech, so for questions about *anything*, guess whom they call? )

Thanks for your response, you were very helpful! I probably just unblock them the sites that they usually use for starters.

Just a little question for my own: where can I ask about what to do with site http://freerice.com (very good site, but shows such message: "If you can see this text, you may have an ad blocker or software enabled that is preventing us from displaying the sponsored ads that are paying for the grains that you are earning. Please disable the ad blocker or software?"). And I don't really want to allow all those scripts (they are from tracking companies) - maybe I should allow them on this page only? The problem is that I allowed them all once and the text message didn't go away... (I have AdBlockPlus but without any blacklist. I also have ghostery now, and it's blocking Rubicon).

Should I post it elsewhere?

Roc wrote:Thanks for your response, you were very helpful! I probably just unblock them the sites that they usually use for starters.

Yes, that's a good start, and you're quite welcome.

Roc wrote:Just a little question for my own: where can I ask about what to do with site http://freerice.com (very good site, but shows such message: "If you can see this text, you may have an ad blocker or software enabled that is preventing us from displaying the sponsored ads that are paying for the grains that you are earning. Please disable the ad blocker or software?"). And I don't really want to allow all those scripts (they are from tracking companies) - maybe I should allow them on this page only? The problem is that I allowed them all once and the text message didn't go away... (I have AdBlockPlus but without any blacklist. I also have ghostery now, and it's blocking Rubicon).

Should I post it elsewhere?

For the response to the latter question, which involves NoScript's ABE feature, see Forum NoScript > ABE,"Allowing desired advertisers only at Freerice", to which this topic was split.