Give it up for Google (Anti) Spy

Good job!!

like it!

minor semantic, but the final option on the malware warning page "Or you can continue to ___" might be better phrased as "Or you can continue to the potentially harmful page ____" That is to say that it isn't made clear that the link is to the site with malware. It could be construed to be a different site that is a safe option, or something else entirely. I just found it a little vague.

It would be nice if this were integrated with the Google Toolbar or better merged with Safe Browsing (Firefox)

Good work!
I agree with what Sohil said, it would be better if this was integrated with the toolbar instead since lot of people are starting to use it.

It would be nice if the warning provided more information about the nature of the malpage.

The way the message is currently worded is, like, "Trust us. We're Google and we decide what's good and what's bad for you."

Something better would be, e.g. "The site you are about to visit has been reported to install software without user permission on Microsoft Windows XP-based computers..."

Well it is true Roger. Google's method reaches out in simpler terms to help the remaining 98% understand.

about Safe Browsing (now part of google toolbar for firefox): chances are they're using the same database for this. what kind of integration would you have beyond that?

Philip, did you clean up the interstitial page's links for your post?

When I visit http://www.google.com/interstitial?url=http://asta-killer.com/list.html the two links on the page have some Google tracking stuff appended to them, so that what should be (and is in your post) http://www.stopbadware.org/home/help is actually formatted as http://www.stopbadware.org/home/help&sa=X&oi=interstitial&ct=stopbadware

(For visibility without Philips's auto-URL-maker, the end of the link should be /help but is actually /help&sa=X&oi=interstitial&ct=stopbadware).

Which of course breaks the URL, and leads only to a 404 error page. Same for the "you can continue to" link. I see the same problem on all such interstitial warning pages. Everyone else too?

Less importantly, I wonder why they don't use the referrer or search terms to hyperlink "Return to the previous page" and "Try another search" to appropriate links? They might as well link "advisory provided by Google" to, well, a Google page, too.

All in all, a nice idea (I suppose: depends on the quality of the StopBadware.org database to avoid being seriously irritating, I'd have thought), but I think we should treat this draft of the page as a Beta ;)

No, I don't like this at all. Google isn't saying that the page *will* cause problems, they're saying it *may* cause problems. At what point was Google elected as the Internet Police force?

Are Google checking this page on an hourly or daily basis? If not, their information is going to be out of date. What if the page content etc has changed since they last looked?

If Google is concerned enough about the page to issue a warning why don't they just delete it in the first place?

At some point they're going to get it wrong, and I can see big lawyer-type smiles.

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Are Google checking this page on an hourly or daily basis? If not, their information is going to be out of date. What if the page content etc has changed since they last looked?
<quote>

I'd say that there is already prior presidence with between most of the major search players of malware site notification (in there toolbars, extensions and plugins), Google has just brought this to the next step by alerting you to possible malware in the search results. One might say that Google is acually doing it's due diligence warning it's customers before they get infected. How many malware sites are Google bombed to get search results linked to their sites? Many poeple doen't even observe the site that they're going to be directed to, they simply click on the link because their search terms are highlighed. I think that this is a good service and it's nice to see this service implemented.

I wonder if they will start putting this type of warning on SEO software web pages? lol.

I use the Compete toolbar that warns me of potential malware/harmful sites in the toolbar.

Check it for yourselves: toolbar.compete.com

This is really cool built-in feature for Google. Does anyone know of othere search engines that have this?

> Philip, did you clean up the interstitial page's links for your post?

You are right Milly, I did. But when I visit the interstitial page again, it's now working. The link to StopBadware is shown as:
http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.stopbadware.org/home/help&sa=X&oi=interstitial&ct=stopbadware

Philipp, what other warnings do you envision Google implementing in the future?

Ah, for me too now Philip.

Though if Google can make their URL redirector smart enough to strip the appended "&sa=X&oi=interstitial&ct=stopbadware" from the resultant 302 Redirect, I wonder why they can't include some basic anti-phishing safeguards (as per http://blogoscoped.com/forum/40362.html#id40422)?