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Knowing whats safe to click on the Internet is a vital skill to folks who want to stay out of trouble. As I am fond of saying, Careful where you click. What you dont click on is just as important as what you do.

The Internet is crawling with websites run by scammers, who want to trick you into clicking on things that lead to misery. Bogus emails clogging inboxes are also trying to trick people into falling for the scammers latest scheme.

Using a high-quality, properly configured browser like Mozillas Firefox is the first step in protecting your Web browsing experience.

Safe surfing can also be enhanced with the addition of a website rating tool that will warn you if you are about to visit a potentially dangerous website. My favorite tool of this type is called Web of Trust.

Web of Trust (WOT) is a free security add-on for your browser, and is designed to warn you before you interact with a risky website, keeping you safe from online scams, identity theft, spyware, spam, viruses and unreliable shopping sites.

WOT is compatible with all popular browsers. Download and install WOT at http://www.mywot.com.

Web of Trust works by allowing WOT users to rate websites that they visit. Ratings are gathered in four areas: trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety.

Users give ratings in each category from dark red (the worst rating) to dark green (the best rating.

The ratings are then analyzed and compiled, and an overall rating is given to the website.

When visiting a website, these ratings show up as a small symbol in the browsers toolbar.

The ratings are also visible in other very useful places, such as Google search results and embedded email links.

One example that I tested demonstrated very clearly just how useful a service Web of Trust can be; that example was the rip-off website FinallyFast.com.

Perhaps you remember the TV commercials for FinallyFast.com, as they aired on most all major networks. They feature regular-looking computer users complaining about poor computer performance.

The first red flag that I noticed, signaling that something wasnt on the up-and-up, was the Apple Macintosh computer that was displaying a Windows blue screen of death error message.

Perhaps thats nitpicking, but the ad does flash a notice on the screen stating that the website is for PC computers only.

The commercial goes on to encourage folks to visit FinallyFast.com and run a bunch of free PC repair tools, so that their computer can run like new.

Joyful computer users (including one lady using a Mac) are shown exclaiming things like, Dude! Its finally fast! FinallyFast.com!

If its true that theres a sucker born every minute, then many a sucker has fallen for FinallyFasts cleverly contrived con job.

After paying for and installing the activated FinallyFast software (a requirement if true repairs are to be made), thousands of PC users have been horrified to learn that the software actually installs multiple viruses and spyware programs.

Stories of mysterious, recurring and hard-to-remove FinallyFast credit card charges abound.

However, if these same people had been using Web of Trust, they would have noticed the WOT circle in the upper right corner turned yellow.

Clicking the circle would reveal a WOT rating of one-half of one star, out of a possible total of five stars. Not so good!

Similar warnings will also appear at other scammy websites like MyFasterPC.com and mycleanpc.com.

Many wasted dollars could have been saved and headaches avoided if their victims had been using Web of Trust.

Is a sucker really born every minute? Maybe so, but they can keep themselves out of trouble by using Web of Trust. I recommend it; trust me.

Dave Moore, CISSP, has been fixing computers in Oklahoma since 1984. Founder of the non-profit Internet Safety Group Ltd, he also teaches Internet safety community training workshops. He can be reached at 919-9901 or internetsafetygroup.com.

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Can you trust the World Wide Web? - Norman Transcript