Comments on: Google Warns “This Website May Harm Your Computer”

By: kirtsy.com

kirtsy.com — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:06:50 +0000

Does Anybody Smell Another Google Lawsuit ?…

I was searching for the Microsoft documents on using system restore and to my suprise, when I looked at the first result in Google, I was confronted with a warning from Google that Microsoft’s site may harm my computer. I took a screenshot in disbeli…

By: Jason Tieger

Jason Tieger — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:11:29 +0000

This won’t really impact the big guys but think of all the damage this did to bloggers and small-tim webmasters who may have lost out on potential visitors.

By: Olaf

Olaf — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:14:41 +0000

Could Google really be sued over this? It could have been hackers doing the dirty work here.

By: Desiree

Desiree — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:16:49 +0000

Why does Google even put this in the search results? They are not an AV company. When will they stop trying to do everything under the sun and finally do one thing right.

By: Tatanya

Tatanya — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:17:53 +0000

I was searching for my site this morning and saw the warning on my site. I even called my hosting company to see if I had been hacked or something.

By: Jason

Jason — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:19:18 +0000

So I do a google search, and the link I click on comes up with a page that says “Warning, this site may harm your computer” and some blah blah about malware. The two problems with this message are a) it was a wikipedia page I was linking to, and b) it’s doing this with EVERY SINGLE search result.

By: Gremmie317

Gremmie317 — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:20:31 +0000

I just scanned my computer thinking I had some weird malware. This was the first site I thought to check to see if others are having this problem. Glad to know it’s not just me.

By: Tailspin

Tailspin — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:20:57 +0000

Yes, I noticed it too. Even dot-gov sites have the warning from Google. The only ones I notice that don’t have that warning are their “sponsored links”.

By: Pitzin Realis

Pitzin Realis — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:00:12 +0000

Haaha, Google really dropped the ball this time.

By: Oriour

Oriour — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:02:24 +0000

Today everything I get back is labeled as malicious by google, even the google site.

By: Peter Zen

Peter Zen — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:03:23 +0000

I had this same problem. Check your time/date on the lower right of your screen.

Mine showed a date in June 2009, which then made the security certificates “expired”.

Now I’m wondering how the date was changed.

Please post back and let me know if this fixes the problem.

By: Rajput

Rajput — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:06:12 +0000

Everything is back to normal now. Google has fixed the problem.

By: Google Malware

Google Malware — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:10:33 +0000

[…] Google Warns “This Website May Harm Your Computer” - Does Anybody Smell Another Google Lawsuit? (affiliatebestprograms.com) - January 31, 2009It seems Google was manfunctioning this morning and labelling every website in the search results as “harmful”. Of course, Twitter was flowing with the tweets about “This site may harm your computer”… […]

By: Ace in the Hole

Ace in the Hole — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:16:33 +0000

I really don’t see how Google could be held liable for a lawsuit on this one. It was a programming error or a hacking incedent. No damage was done so where do you get off saying that Google could be sued ?

By: Glamumous

Glamumous — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:19:29 +0000

Google has fixed this problem already. I didn’t get to see my site with the warning on it :-(

By: Chetan

Chetan — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:22:37 +0000

Google says it’s Stopmalware that did it. And Stopmalware denies with that. Then who was responsible for that?

Lol

By: Jesse Grant

Jesse Grant — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:24:04 +0000

Lol , google is harmful , google is not only harmful but the devil !

By: Sunny

Sunny — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:28:02 +0000

I think google is shameless. They should close down their site after such incident.

P.S.: Just kidding. We love you Google.

By: Prince

Prince — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:29:03 +0000

Today i was checking my website’s pages in search engine and i was very worried when i saw “This site may harm your computer” with every page of my website. I was fainted but after that i searched for Google and Yahoo and same was with them . Isn’t that funny? This was my first experience with a google bug :d

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:53:16 +0000

Update: Google released an official explaination on their blog…

What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message “This site may harm your computer” if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to come up with criteria for maintaining this list, and to provide simple processes for webmasters to remove their site from the list.

By: Mark Coresigm

Mark Coresigm — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:19:34 +0000

Just goes to show that when you rely on other comapnies for your data, things can get screwed up real quick.

I don’t believe that this type information should be displayed in search results anyway. Most spyware and malware is really affiliate tracking cookies and stuff like that. Google logs far more data about web users than any other company but they never get marked as spyware.

By: kiteflyer

kiteflyer — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:22:10 +0000

How can google make a determination if a site is bad for my computer?

By: Higgy

Higgy — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:25:10 +0000

I’ll bet you click-thru rates for Adwords ads go thru the roof while EVERY site in the organic index is “harmful to users computers”…..

Just a thought.

By: Beth

Beth — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:33:09 +0000

It’s the biggest messup I’ve ever seen in the history of the internet.

Has anybody seen the story making it into mainstream news yet?

By: Impact

Impact — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:01:40 +0000

It is amazing how far the Internet seemed to ground to a halt for the 40 minutes or so that Google was down (I had less Internet savvy friends desperate the research information and the only easy solution I could suggest was to be move them to a different search provider - I doubt they’ve changed back). Obviously some countries may have been asleep at the time this happened, but to a substantial portion of the world this was big news.

By: estetik

estetik — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 05:35:27 +0000

Google knows everything. But still have some problems. I think the algoritma is not still ideal.