Patent ID: 7694135

Claim:
A method comprising: determining by a computer processor the trustworthiness of a location on the Internet and identifying for that location a numerical trust rating over a numerical range; and providing trustworthiness information based on the trust rating to a user, wherein determining includes: accessing one or more lists of known trustworthy or untrustworthy locations, and if a definitive determination is not made that a location is trustworthy or not trustworthy, searching for certificates that are directly related to the location, and if a certificate directly related to the location is not found, searching for certificates that are indirectly related to the location, the searching for certificates indirectly related to the location including determining a second level domain name of the location and prepending one or more predetermined prefixes to the second level domain name, and if a certificate is identified as directly related or indirectly related to the location, the determining is based on a calculation including properties of the certificate related to the location.