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Google Search Flagging Everything As Potentially Harmful

Posted by Soulskill on from the minor-problem dept.

dowlingw writes "It looks like for the moment at least, all Google results are failing the malware checks and being listed with a warning 'This site may harm your computer,' including all pages from Google themselves. Users trying to visit pages at search results will only be able to proceed via manual manipulation of the search result link to remove the Google click-through (which is also broken). Until Google fixes this bug, it looks Google web search is useless." Update: 01/31 at 15:16 GMT by SS: The problem now appears to be fixed.
Update: 01/31 at 22:01 GMT by KD : Google has now posted an explanation, apologizing and taking responsibility for the "human error" that led to the problem.

9 of 407 comments (clear)

  1. slashdotted already by buchner.johannes · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Also, the sites

    www.stopbadware.org/
    and
    www.google.at/support/bin/answer.py?answer=45449&topic=360&hl=de&sa=X&oi=malwarewarninglink&resnum=1&ct=help

    were slashdotted before this was even on slashdot ...

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  2. The ads are broken too... by duffbeer703 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No AdSense ads are displaying, at least for several popular advertising keywords like "refinance".

    --
    Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
  3. Has anyone considered... by sphealey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Has anyone considered the possibility that as of this morning 95% of the sites on the Internet are infected with malware?

    sPh

  4. Exit to parking lot, run in serpentine fashion! by GreyLurk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Someone is so getting fired for this.

    This is the first Google effective downtime in my memory.. Were there other ones that anyone can think of?

  5. reminds me of the classic Letterman commercial by WormholeFiend · · Score: 3, Interesting

    the one with Letterman says "imagine what the world would be like without TV", and then you get a couple of seconds of nothing, then Letterman appears again and says "scary, wasnt it?"

  6. They broke one thing to fix something else by gcnaddict · · Score: 4, Interesting

    serials.ws is now no longer showing as harmful. It seems like they disabled the engine entirely.

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  7. Failsafe by fyrewulff · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At least it failsafes to every site being flagged. Much better than it just letting people get malware ridden sites.

    --
    "We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
  8. Re:Broke the internets! by Kintanon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I did, Screenshots here:
    Google Flags Itself as Harmful Hilarity ensued.

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  9. Re:Not a common carrier by jesser · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Search should be simple: give the user what they are looking for.

    That's a simple way to state the goal, but it takes a lot of clever algorithms to achieve it. If your search results are irrelevant, spam, scams, or largely duplicates, you didn't get what you were looking for. And if a web site takes over your computer as soon as you visit it, you really didn't get what you were looking for, hence the interstitial warning page.

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