Google Searchs Now Return, "This site may harm your computer"?!

[rkr1958]

What's going on with Google? All of a sudden all search returns have the message and link, "This site may harm your computer".




And when I click on the returned search link (not the message) to try to go to those sites I get,

[rkr1958]

Strange. It seems to be working now. Really strange?

[poisondeathray]

Maybe they got hacked? Seems fixed for me too

[redwudz]

On January 31, 2009, all of Google's results (including google.com and stopbadware.org) were briefly flagged as malware for almost 40 minutes. [1]. As a result stopbadware.org went offline.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StopBadware.org

That must have been embarassing for Google.

[rkr1958]

On January 31, 2009, all of Google's results (including google.com and stopbadware.org) were briefly flagged as malware for almost 40 minutes. [1]. As a result stopbadware.org went offline.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StopBadware.org

That must have been embarassing for Google.

OK, so I wasn't crazy. It's amazing too that this event, which happened about an hour ago is already captured in wikipedia.

[Supreme2k]

[quote="rkr1958"]

It's amazing too that this event, which happened about an hour ago is already captured in wikipedia.

Because geeks are on the job 24/7!

[MJA]

I also got the same warning when i tried to search 'www.notebookreview.com" I thought the site was hacked or somthing.

rkr1958 did u enjoy watching your movie

[Seeker47]

I think some versions of FireFox may issue a warning along these lines -- based on some database of Bad Sites -- but it is a lot more selective. That is, the warnings are kind of infrequent . . . unless you happen to be a connoisseur of dodgey sites.

[rkr1958]

I also got the same warning when i tried to search 'www.notebookreview.com" I thought the site was hacked or somthing.

rkr1958 did u enjoy watching your movie

I haven't seen it yet. A co-worker of mine was talking about it at work. I like Steve McQueen but what really got me interested in it was that the lead in credits for it had, "And, Introducing Bob Newhart". I head the part he played was funny and that's what tweaked my interest.

[disturbed1]

I think some versions of FireFox may issue a warning along these lines -- based on some database of Bad Sites -- but it is a lot more selective. That is, the warnings are kind of infrequent . . . unless you happen to be a connoisseur of dodgey sites.

This was a google glitch that happened with all browsers. Even using google to search for google resulted in www.google.com being flagged as a Bad Site

Firefox uses google by default, so the results that are normally displayed in Firefox comes from google.

[rkr1958]

Google Searches Return Bogus Warnings


MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Computer users doing Google searches during a nearly one-hour period Saturday were greeted with disturbing but erroneous messages that every site turned up in the results might be harmful.

The company blamed the mistake on human error and apologized for any inconvenience caused to users and site owners whose pages were incorrectly labeled.

The glitch occurred between 6:30 a.m. and 7:25 a.m., Google Inc. said in an explanation on its company blog. Anyone who did a Google search during that time likely saw the message "This site may harm your computer" accompanying every search result, the company said.

Google said it routinely flags any search results with that message if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously, a practice aimed at protecting its users. It gets its list of suspicious sites from StopBadware.org, a nonprofit project headed by legal scholars at Harvard and Oxford universities who research consumer complaints.

Saturday's error happened when the latest update to the list was received from StopBadware but was checked in erroneously in such a way that the warning would apply to all URLs, the company said in a statement.

The glitch was caught by on-call staff and the file was quickly fixed, Google said. Since the updates are applied in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing at 6:27 a.m. and disappeared no later than 7:25 a.m., with the duration for any particular user approximately 40 minutes, it said.

"We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in to prevent it from happening again," said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, in the statement.

reference

[Xylob the Destroyer]

and here:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9127...intsrc=hm_list

[redwudz]

I wouldn't want to be the identified 'human error'' person.

[blinky88]

I was looking for free fonts last night and got the same response, I did not click on any of the sites because of the warning. It was the first time this has ever happened, it never occured to me that someone outside of Google had hacked into their site. You really have to ask yourself how anyone could get their kicks with this stunt, for that matter, how can anyone get their kicks out of writing a virus .... it's a strange world we live in.

[zoobie]

Huge mistake by Google. They should know that the user is a creature of habit. People simply went to other search engines perhaps liking them more than Google.

[sanlyn]

Same message started appearing this morning. Strikes me as silly that the "warning" claims that the number of "bad pages" found on VH after searching thru some 25,000-plus pages is zero(0) bad pages and zero(0) infections. What a crock. This is what happens when the bean counters try to manage technology.

[fritzi93]

Yeah, I saw that message too, early this morning. An hour later it was gone.

[Baldrick]

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/346642-Has-VH-com-been-Hacked