The BBC is reporting that Google will try and warn people about pages they return that may contain malware.
Initially the warnings seen via the search site will be generic and simply alert people to the fact that a site has been flagged as dangerous. Eventually the warnings will become more detailed as Stop Badware researchers visit harmful sites and analyse how they try to subvert users’ machines.
I had a play with one example that the BBC quotes:
A research report released in May 2006 looked at the safety of the results returned by a search and found that, on average, 4-6% of the sites had harmful content on them. For some keywords, such as “free screensavers” the number of potentially dangerous sites leapt to 64%.
But I couldn’t get it to warn me – perhaps it’s because Google knows I’m not running Windows ? 🙂
I wonder if Google will allow persons to filter their search results against these dangerous sites? This could take the form of Bayesian filtering used in most anti Spam programs or a whitelist, based on user experience. It would be better if Google banned such sites as an alternative to warning users of potential spyware or viruses from downloading such content.
The problem is some unscrupulous outfits may subvert their search engine optimisation methods to lure people into their spyware/malware/virus dogged site. Another issue is some of these sites may have a huge Google Page Rank and the proprietors of each site may get touchy about lost rankings or traffic.
Does Google warn persons on Mozilla Firefox using Windows machines?
1. No idea!
2. They already do this..
3. It just takes you to a warning page at Google first rather than sending you directly to the site I believe. Still haven’t seen it in action yet..
cheers!
Chris