COMMENTS
It's Google's outsourced malware partner, stopbadware.org, that's gone down....
i guess we know what Google would do now, huh.
even searching google gives the same message. We can say google may harm your computer
literally. :)
Yes, I'm getting the message, too. Here's what makes me suspicious: Even searches for Google, itself, carry that message. Could the message itself be malware? And why hasn't Google responded to the crisis? (Yup it's a crisis, if nobody visits my site for an extended time.) Has Google been taken over by aliens??
PS: Love the Google dunce cap! Can I customize my Google homepage with it?
I'm getting the same message on every query, every site ;)
I'd actually love for them to leave this the way it is for a week, and see what the impact is on overall internet traffic. Might be fascinating.
I saw the same errors. Now they're all fixed on my side. --South Florida
Imagine if all search engines would shut down! lol
Happening on Google.ca as well
It's interesting - I'm not seeing it at all on my Macbook, running Firefox or Safari. My fiancee, on the other side of the room on a similarly loaded Macbook, is seeing it. Malware of some sort? Not a bad question.
Knowing Google, they will find a way to make some lemonade.
In Canada, getting the same problem.
...and "idioticness" isn't a word :D
first of all... there are not only 1 searchengines. Try yahoo and you'll get what you want. Second.. i think it was an update of google of their software. Third.. it just took about 20minutes and is gone now. Tho.. no problem for me.
Same problem earlier, but seems fixed now.
apparently it would be a DNS issue on their side - ?
been the same here in austria.
funny, imagine google down just for one day? millions can't surf cause they never learnd how to use the adress bar :-)
I don't know if they fixed the problem by now or if it didn't affect Google UK, but no errors showing here for me on queries.
Google snafu in London as well. Cheers.
It's 10:28 here in Florida. I didn't get the warning on a PC or a Mac.
This freaked me out for a bit...went to another search site, not a problem. Not great biz for Google, or any of us.
Puts things into perspective quickly!
We have had the same problems in UK, looks like its finally sorted now though.
I wonder how much money has been evaporated as a result of this 'blip'!?
I thought it was some joker flagging conservative sites, 'cause I was looking for articles and images of Michael Steele, the new GOP leader! :) Pretty crazy stuff!
I had this problem with my website several months ago. They're on a witch hunt to get rid of offending websites that MAY be responsible for spamming but are way too lenient on what fits that description. In any case my problem was a small worm virus that infected my wordpress. It was something like stats-press. You can search for it in pages and posts and eliminate it that way.
I'm in Ireland, and I had the same problem, it's fixed now though. It was the most exciting to happen all week! If it went on longer, people would have resorted to cannibalism. I know I'd rather do that than use any other search! Please give me a job Google :D
...wonder what damage it will do to google's peerless search brand equity? Pity the admins and mgmt at stopbadware... ouch!
Well, here in Saudi Arabia it's a no show... =O
I've yet to see it, and I've asked around nobody else here have dealt with it... xP
Yes I get this message too, but only when using Safari, not when using Firefox (and Noscript). Stockholm, Sweden.
OMGAWD, the same thing happened to me. I was logged into Google and EVERY site said it would harm my computer. I then logged out of Google and it went away. I am also very concerned about how it will affect my web site. There is really no way to repair the damage and it makes me wonder if Google is that accurate.
I had the same problem about 30 minutes ago, but it is fixed now. I'm in Maryland btw.
Dr Blockbuster in Scotland saw this problem earlier on Google, but it seems to have resolved itself ... or been resolved :wink:
I'm not getting it a 10:38 am ET Saturday morning; on your site or any other.
Safari, OS X 10.5.6
still have this problem in devon uk
It definetly freaked me out here in Thailand as I was searching for my own website. But didn't take long to figure out that the friggin message was on every site, including Google's.
The "inbound marketing" query in Cardiff, UK seems working fine. No sign of
“This site may harm your computer” warning.
In recent news: Google stocks plummet
Can't help but think how our reliance (or even dependence) on Google has become like our reliance on electricity. A hiccup in either has the potential to bring modern life to a screeching halt.
I first noticed it when searching for something on WordPress.org. I immediately thought it was some sort of black hat marketing campaign for Blogger. (Well, not really, but that would be funny.)
I googled this morning "Munich live webcams", and all results showed the same messages. Then I went back and googles one of my own delaer websites, and it did not show. After that I went back google the first search and all the "warning messages" were gone. I am wondering who cam up with this crap on Google?
VJ
Have had the same problem here in Australia but its now resolved.
Tried Google just now, no problems. May be resolved. Problems with its outsourced malware application? http://tinyurl.com/cyboqq
They seem to have fixed it. It was kind of funny. I started putting in searches I figures would be safe - like "vatican."
I almost choked when Google came back with the message, "The Holy See may harm your computer." Yowser!
~jon
More screenshots: http://wtanaka.com/node/7876
I get the same message when I go to access my site. real Bummer. - It might prevent people from accessing my web site!
All the more reason to not rely on one source for your traffic. :)
Google do seem to be having multiple issues at the moment. The other day, the new "offline" Labs feature for Gmail ended up breaking Google Reader for a lot of people. They fixed it quickly enough that most people wouldn't have noticed (it happened in the early hours of the morning EST), but still.
I guess it just goes to show that even the mighty Google isn't adverse to technical glitches. Might want to consider a backup strategy for any data you have stored on Google. I suspect it's not a case of "if" but "when" something happens to wipe out your Gmail, Gdocs, etc.
I saw the message too. I am in Panama (Central America).
Saw this error myself 10 minutes ago on both Safari and Firefox. I tried Yahoo and had no problem. I restarted my MacBook Pro, opened Safari and tried Google again and the problem disappeared.
So, what exactly do we do? Still don't understand if this is a google problem or something now in our computers.
Because of this, I thought our site's actually having problems. I even reported to our tech support dept the error. Google, what happend?
Thanks to everyone for your comments. Exciting morning. :)
Carolyn: Best I can tell, this was just a glitch at Google. No computers were actually harmed.
Here is a screenshot of me telling a friend about the google bug at [15:38:04 = UTC+1] which should prove that the problem did infact last more then 40mins.
http://umba.dk/googbug-dk.png
Short translation (Danish -> English)
OMFG (quite obvious)
[Google.com link]
Check this link
W3C has been tagged as:
“This site may harm your computer”
I find it interesting that I have never gotten the "may harm your computer" message all those times I clicked a Google search result and got Antivirus 2009.
Did you follow the last link, the one for what to do if you own the site? This happened to me months ago, and it was because my WordPress blog had been hacked and a bit of invisible malicious code stuffed into my database. Without the Google alert, I would never have known. I was able to find the problem, remove the bad stuff, and submit that fact back to Google within an hour. And the next day the warning message was gone. Are you 100% certain your content management system is safe from malicious hacks? It certainly could be a technical glitch at Google, but it wouldn't hurt for you to check on the health of your site.
the same for me in lithuania.lots of warnings for pages that i KNOW are harmless
11:15 am All is well. Google seemed to fix the problem.
had the same problem a few minutes ago. im in the philippines btw. so far everything is back to normal, (its 12:24am here feb 01) im just a bit concerned if this might be some of malware.... hmmm.....
Picked it up once this morning searching Lincoln Monument sculptures. Disappeared after restarting firefox. Using Macbook Pro.
Yes am having the same problems, this is from the UK.
It wont give you access to your search material. Its reports that its Malware and Harmful to your Computer.
Looks like its working for about 30mins as of 1630pm GMT
its so weird it happened to me today trying to get on the facebook i went back and tried another search but the same thing happened im in the uk its all right now. wonder what causes that it said something about malware although i didnt read it all as you said i was scared away by the forcefulness of the second warning i thought my pc might just blow up or something
Getting the email alert to this blog post was probably the most comforting thing for me all week. I was freaking out this morning. Well, it's about 11:40 am in Philadelphia and it appears to be fixed.
For those still watching this thread, it seems that the Google bug may have also affected GMail, sending a lot of good mail to the spam folder.
Have not verified this (didn't see the problem myself).
Yes, I am in Canada and had the same issue here. I saw it as being hijacked by some frikkin idiots. I ran the Windows Defender out of desperation and it was fixed. Not sure if that was a coincidence though. It has remained fixed for 2 hours now.
The comment thread for this blog was spammed in my gmail!
I got this error message a number of times when I searched through google vs going directly to a site url.
In the southern US here.
Using something other than google until this is cleared up.. and running a scan while I'm at it.
I'm also in Canada and had the same thing when using Safari on a Mac. The problem seems to have disappeared but the message gave me a start!
Here's the official
post from Google
I had that problem all morning in Chrome but didn't seem to in Firefox but maybe it just went away on its own.
My mom called me first thing this morning from Boston freaked out.
same problem here. I threw out my PC and bought a MAC because I knew the evil Microsoft was behind it. now no more problem.
Yep. Here, too, also in Mass. Using Firefox. I got suspicious when CNN's site was deemed "dangerous," and when a deep scan by McAfee turned up nothing.I switched away from Google when searching or did cut and paste into browser.
Nasty glitch that will affect traffic. At least it's on a Saturday. If it affects Web-watching Superbowl types, watch out!
Problem hits mainstream media ...Washington Post first to cover
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/01/google_this_internet_will_harm.html?hpid=sec-tech
Here is the news from google:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-site-may-harm-your-computer-on.html
Here is the official explanation re the error
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-site-may-harm-your-computer-on.html
What it does prove though is that they do not test these releases of new code, parameter files etc.
I now trust them that little bit less...... and with fingers in many pies this is the sort of thing that could, in the future, have major repercussions for their entire brand.
I was working on something when this happened, and my usual writing work needs me to search some stuff...
I thought it was nothing and slept it over...but thanks it's fixed. I can't live without Google search.
Here's an interesting FOX NEWS VIDEO related to what you're talking about. Check it out!
http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=videolandingpage&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject=3472956&referra
I went to take the Google professional exam Saturday morning and got the same message. When I typed in Google. com it finally let me in. contacted google still no reply.
I use Firefox 3.0 and normally doing searches in the Google toolbar and my operating system is Ubuntu 8.10. I did not notice this problem. I'm wondering if anyone else with a similar setup did.
For twitter folks I am
@jonlyles
google is fucking me over right now with this problem. i fixed what they told me to fix and they're saying there are still errors on certain pages, despite the fact that some of the pages they say have errors don't even exist anymore. i'm pissed.
I haven't seen the error myself but after reading the other comments on this post, it is definitely concerning. Thanks for sharing.
The error happened to me in Finland today.
I didn't get to the page i wanted though i copy pasted the url.