Do Website rating plugins matter?

Questions on the services to rate trustworthiness of websites and effects

[WingedHorse]

There are many services that allow you to submit phishing/scam/etc. websites to them, several of them offering browser plugins and extensions to let users rate or check ratings of such sites.

I recently came into contact with mywot [mywot.com] and began using it for testing purposes but even a quick search finds a dozen of similar services (some with big names like McAffee [siteadvisor.com] or OpenDNS [phishtank.com] behind them).

Aside from users' perspective... Have you people noticed any effect on websites due to the previously mentioned or something similar? Does website traffic decrease at all notably if it gets blacklisted in such services or are the user bases small enough not to matter? I would guess that some e-stores might lose some commerce but how much? Do you as a user care about these kind of things?

Just wondering if these have any effect on anything or just can be forgotten. I myself don't have high enough or long lasting enough statistics (nor websites marked as phishing) to look into it and figured someone here might have.

(also, hi. My first new thread here.)

[piatkow]

Does "Joe Public" use such things or is it only techies like us?

I used to have such a plug in but never found it particularly useful. I didn't bother reinstalling when I replaced my PC. Maybe if I made a habit of getting downloads from unknown sites I would have needed it.