If you had noticed today, there was an error occurring in the Google search results which listed all the search results along with a appended warning message as “This site may harm your computer”.
Google’s VP of Search Products Marissa Mayer has just responded to the issue today that marked all Google results with the warning “This site may harm your computer” and advised users not to visit them. The problem, she says, "It was simple human error: when importing the malware list from StopBadware.org, the URL ‘/’ was unintentionally added, meaning that every website would be included".
She also added that, "We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to get our list of URLs. StopBadware carefully researches each consumer complaint to decide fairly whether that URL belongs on the list. Since each case needs to be individually researched, this list is maintained by humans, not algorithms. We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to release on the site today. Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs."
She also said, "Thanks to our team for their quick work in finding this and fixing this within 40 minutes. And, our apologies to any of you who were inconvenienced, and to site owners whose pages were incorrectly labeled. We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again."
Google’s VP of Search Products Marissa Mayer has just responded to the issue today that marked all Google results with the warning “This site may harm your computer” and advised users not to visit them. The problem, she says, "It was simple human error: when importing the malware list from StopBadware.org, the URL ‘/’ was unintentionally added, meaning that every website would be included".
She also added that, "We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to get our list of URLs. StopBadware carefully researches each consumer complaint to decide fairly whether that URL belongs on the list. Since each case needs to be individually researched, this list is maintained by humans, not algorithms. We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to release on the site today. Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs."
She also said, "Thanks to our team for their quick work in finding this and fixing this within 40 minutes. And, our apologies to any of you who were inconvenienced, and to site owners whose pages were incorrectly labeled. We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again."
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