Google Adds Data About Malware To Transparency Report

Nerval's Lobster writes "Google is adding data about malware to its Transparency Report. For the past seven years, the search-engine giant has offered a Safe Browsing program that warns Web-surfers about unsafe Websites (i.e., those loaded with malware or phishing scams). The new section of the Transparency Report will show how many people see those Safe Browsing warnings on a weekly basis, along with other malware-related tidbits, including Webmaster response times to threats and Website reinfection rates. The data includes malware distribution by autonomous systems, which are one (or more) networks controlled by a single entity such as a university or ISP. 'This data is part of our effort to support a safer and more secure web,' read Google's explanatory note in the Report. 'By sharing information from our scans, we hope to encourage cooperation among those who battle malware.' Google takes all that autonomous system data and breaks it down by country. For example, of the 31 million Websites in the United States scanned by Google, roughly 2 percent host malware. In other words, this data just reinforces what pretty much everybody knows: it's not a safe Internet out there."

Comments

Will they include ...

[DavidClarkeHR]

Being warned against malware is great - on the other hand, I don't tend to use the internet (or my computer) in a way that would make me susceptible to most infections.

Now, being warned about potential government spying on the other hand ... that would be useful.

Re:NSA Malware

[AliasMarlowe]

Surely the NSA is the biggest piece of Malware out there right now, I hope google added them to this list.

One of the biggest distributors of malware, certainly, but they outsource this function to numerous others (possibly including Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, etc.). The NSA is probably also one of the biggest purchasers of malware.