Google beefs up search result malware warning

Google has expanded a program designed to prevent search engine users from visiting websites that could scam them or install malware on their computers. The feature includes the words “This site may be compromised” to search results that contain sites that Google's automated tools indicate may be under the influence of third- …

[Michael Kean]

Thankfully, there's alternativeto.net

Google is such a pain when looking for software. Lots of results from fake search aggregators, etc. Now when looking for software I don't bother with Google, and just head to alternativeto.net.

I wonder if this 'beefing' will reduce some of the crap that Google links to.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake pills and spam

Since Google have GMail (and Microsoft Hotmail) which must receive thousands of the spam messages advertising these malware infected sites/fake pharmacies why don't they block the URLs which show up in the messages?

They'd just need to watch for URLs that appear in many spam messages and flag them with "this site has been advertised via spam and is probably operated by criminals" like they do with the malware warnings in their browsers/search results.

Seems like something fairly simple for them to do really which would really educate people - after all, plenty seem stupid enough to click through spam links, a second - very obvious - warning might make them think twice about buying something...

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

No it won't

It flags legit sites because they have an ad banner that is hosted on the same provider as a dodgy ad. Then ignore your requests to remove the flag unless you respond from within your Google(TM) pay(tm) service(tm)

In any other industry it would be called a protection racket.

[TeeCee]

Re: No it won't.

"It flags legit sites because they have an ad banner that is hosted on the same provider as a dodgy ad."

Good. They have my wholehearted support on this one. Just maybe the owners of said sites will get pissed off with the traffic loss and dump their shite ad peddlar in favour of one who's prepared to vet the shit they pump out before they do so and will insist on hosting the material themselves rather than linking to it, so they know damned well they are serving what they vetted.

The moody ad pushing tossers richly deserve to go bust and this might just be the lever that causes it. Bit of a shame that one of the major offenders here is DoubleClick owned by, er, Google. I wonder if DC ads will have an exemption* here?

*Which would be evil of course.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Not an anonymous coward

A friend has been trying to get Google to de-list one of his sites for over 2 years.

Google's own stats say it all, no malicious content detected in "X" months.

For "X" read over 2 years.

There was one malicious advert injected into the site in 2007 !!!!!

[Winkypop]

This title may be compromised

Will it stop people?

Maybe, probably not.

However, good luck to them for helping..

[Nehmo]

counterfeit drugs? on a Goo result page?

Does this mean I can now get reliable pharmacies for my narcotics via searching with Goo?

~~ Nehmo

[goldcd]

My site got flagged by this a couple of weeks ago.

I'd not removed an install dir for phpmyadmin and some scrote had riddled by site with re-directs.

Cleaned it up, closed the hole and signed up for the google webmaster thingie and asked to be re-examined. Took about 24hours for the all-clear to come through.

All in all, I think it worked pretty well and I've got no quibbles with it.

[lucmars]

AV do the same

AVG has launched the fashion. I wonder if one gets some contradictory flags between an AV and Google and how many ?

Anyway, all that could end up in a protection racket (as YAAc tell it). On the other hand, that put the pressure on the webmasters to keep their sites clean.

[Rune Moberg]

Malware?

I just installed "Google Earth" from some website, and it installed a trojan called googleupdate.exe to my task scheduler. I have no idea what googleupdate.exe does, but I sure as heck did not ask for it to be installed!

Will google.com also warn against those, or will idiots like me remain totally unprotected also in the future?

[Wize]

Its a shame the google spider identifies itself when crawling over websites.

When you view some websites, you get a totally different result that what Google sees it as. Its a way of hiding redirections and malware.

Perhaps they need to stealth up those spiders.

[abushcrafter]

Bad Reporter!

You are misusing the word "hacker" please see:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Hacker

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/05/hackers-wante/

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5573874/Hackers_Wanted_(2008)