Google feature flags dangerous sites

[spatny]

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Hi,

Just read this -

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index...e&NewsID=15464

This is could be what we have been waiting for

Peter

[eskimo]

Nice idea, but I'd imagine that there may be few lawsuits over this as 'bad sites' claim they have been wrongly targetted or censored.

[trevHCS]

There's also going to be those sites that most of us consider bad, but which are in that slightly grey area of trojan spyware. If for example a site does something to help, but then installs numerous other things on top, they could claim that Google is showing them in a bad light.

Nice idea though, but does this mean Google is reading Javascript? Also I wonder how long they'll leave the alert up as for example a hacked site might be cleaned, but if they don't unblock it for a month that's not so good.

Trev

[pricethat]

for example a hacked site might be cleaned, but if they don't unblock it for a month that's not so good.

I disagree, and i also think 1 month would not be enough. If a site is deliberately serving bad hijack attempts and things then it deserves to get banned from the net, though rather than ban google could get some PR out of it by saying oooohh look at us, ain't we great for telling you. But on the other side, if everyone knew they could give it a go and simply stop doing it if they got caught and they would be back in the serps what would actually be the deterent if the wait was only a month? Nil!

[trevHCS]

That would work for those sites which deliberately try to infect computers, but what about those which get hijacked either by poor web host security or a backdoor such as that Sanity Worm which infected 10,000's of PHPBB forums in just a few days? If all those were forever blocked then it would have a devestating effect.

Perhaps they need a timeout on the block and the longer the problem remains, the longer it is before they go back and check. Or possibly something stating that the problem was discovered on X date so that people can if they want take a guess at whether it'll have gone or is a long term problem.

Oh and then there's the problem of false alerts - even the anti-virus people have those on occasions and they've been at this for years.

Trev

[pricethat]

That would work for those sites which deliberately try to infect computers, but what about those which get hijacked either by poor web host security or a backdoor such as that Sanity Worm which infected 10,000's of PHPBB forums in just a few days? If all those were forever blocked then it would have a devestating effect.

i think you are looking at this from the wrong angle, it may be cold and harsh, but there is no difference between a site that got hacked and a site that does it on purpose as far as " the consumer " or the "user" is concerned. This is not about googles relationship with webmasters or site owners, this is about googles relationship with their customer.

There is no difference at all, sure some sites will fall foul of it and "suffer" but there is 8 billion pages out there, google is not exactly stuck for content is it!

This is not about the site owners, this is about protecting the user from malicious downloads, what difference do you propose there is between a worm launched from your site that i hacked and the same worm launched deliberately from my site......It's all worms baby!

[trevHCS]

It's not so much that they shouldn't alert the user (a very good idea), but it's a matter of how long after finding the problem code has gone away do you then reinstate it?

Sure there are 8 billion pages out there, but Google's main objective is supposed to be to find the most useful and relevent pages so if you wipe out permanently the most useful forums (using the sanity worm example) then Google won't be providing their users with the most relevent content.

One way to get around the problem of people removing things temporarily would be a 3 strikes and your out policy. Ie: if the content is removed then ban for 1 month, if they do it again ban for 6 months and if it's done a 3rd time after a period of being clean then it's a lifetime ban. This also gets around people on the inside uploading iffy things as if they can't find them after 2 uploads then there's something wrong with their security.

Trev