Google.com partially dangerous
google.com
google.com
Thats an awful description of googles business model, but partly true...
Until they sort out their ads it's true, it is a dangerous site
(Also it's rogue, not rouge.)
Common sense would dictate that Google would NOT be selling AdWords that would replace THEIR own ad for the top search result for their own products.
EDIT: Wait, you are talking about Duck Duck Go? This thread is about Google.com NOT DDG. Regardless, I get Google's official site at the top with DDG.
Oops forgot the side ads, I also get an ad from apps-2016.com.
I am searching from Canada.
Of note is that these ads are powered by, and clicks redirect through, Yahoo.
[1]: Screen shots for the curious: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jiooo37trog860d/AAAgmpY9SMxcLyIVI...
Bings pretopresult ad for firefox is still malware. Microsoft should be liable for this - http://imgur.com/b2VuRMP.jpg
how can they not use vm's and heuristics to click all their ads and see if it infects their own operating system, before approving the ads, and then rechecking them every so many clicks?
A lot of the time the malware is designed to only show up in certain case scenarios such as date/time, specific version of an OS like Windows XP SP1 but not SP2. Designers come up with the most ludicrous ways of circumventing the Ad approval process, and with hundreds to thousands of new ad's per day there simply isn't an easy way to do all that testing for each single new ad being served, on top of discovering new methods used to skip the checks.
Some networks are truly terrible and just have automation systems but those networks aren't as profitable and are beginning to die out.
With deep learning networks becoming so popular I do often ponder if this type of prevention could be automated slightly better!
Microsoft, at least, has a good incentive to police their malware.
Taken from a comment I wrote a couple of years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7335401
They can't just ban the word "Chrome" from AdWords, though. Spammers/malware authors are very good at figuring out what's needed to slip through the automated systems.
I can assure you that for many years Google has been serving ads that link to malware for search terms like "firefox". I've seen them across different machines, different browsers, different ISPs, different OSs.
The situation with firefox seems better now but only because Mozilla is seemingly buying up all the ads for searches with "firefox" in.
Here's a post about it from a year and a half ago that also links to several earlier posts along the same lines: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8879229
Wouldn't malicious actors always be able to profitably bid more than legitimate companies for AdWords?
Assumptions: - Illegitimate business models are more profitable than legitimate ones
Didn't get any malware links like that.
Windows software installation model is horrifying.
Additionally, the AUR is about as curated as Google Play, and I trust Google Play exceedingly more than random download links on the Internet. You can audit AUR packages via its rating, the number of comments it has, its popularity, and the website enables you to flag packages as malicious, the same way you would flag APKs on Google's service.
IIRC when I searched for FF or Chrome, the top 4-5 results were links to third party sites, but when searching for nvidia drivers the official site was the first non-ad result. Definitely seemed suspicious, and also made me realize how much I missed apt.
Top three results on bing.com also point to google.com.
Any popular free hosting service ends up hosting phishing sites, but Google doesn't aggressively clean them out. Here's Google's oldest phishing site, from 2010.[2] It's an attempt to steal Habbo logins (Habbo is an old virtual world, similar to The Sims.) Lately, phishing via Google Drive is picking up. Phishing sites hosted on Google Spreadsheets have finally disappeared; you can put HTML in a spreadsheet cell and host a site that way. For a long time, Google didn't recognize that this was a way to host a fake site.
At least all the fake sites are under Google's subdomains (sites., drive., etc.) There used to be exploits using "google.com" as an open redirector.
[1] http://sitetruth.com/reports/phishes.html [2] https://sites.google.com/site/freehabbocoinsgbbo00/
If Google serves a single malicious site as a linked result (or in a redirect) it will flag Google.com as hosting malicious content.
This has been the case for years now, also for other Google properties, like Youtube and DoubleClick.
see: https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/safebrowsing/diagn...
Doesn't seem to work very well
(sorry, couldn't resist)
https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/safebrowsing/diagn...
So can I believe this page or not?
In all seriousness though, they've got one of the largest public facing systems in the world. Given the surface area and traffic volumes, it's surprising that the don't have more issues than they do.
> Users sometimes post bad content on websites
> that are normally safe.
One day they decide everyone should be mobile friendly, the next day they decide which sites are bad and which are not, what more?
Every single day, google is giving me more reason to use alternative search engines.
In Chrome and firefox, if google decides your website isn't up to scratch for some random reason, then visitors will see a big scary red warning and be turned away.
Yes, in theory you could get people to use a browser that doesn't incorporate Google censorship, but that's becoming a big ask.
If your website does become blacklisted by Google, good luck finding out why. They won't tell you, and will instead make you click on a "request review" button a million times while you change things to see if it floats their boat.
Isn't it slightly worrying to have the entity who decides if websites are "safe" or not, also have a monopoly on online advertising? What's to stop them blacklisting sites that use competitors advertising? They could claim that it benefits the users some how, whilst squashing any hint of competition.
Google has become the absolute gatekeeper, and (To me at least) it's a very very sad state of affairs. The www used to be free and open.
There is naturally a tradeoff between the value of this information for avoiding dangerous sites, and the risk that Google might be abusing the power that goes with its role in publishing it. At the moment users are mostly deciding that the risk is worth it.
If Google becomes obviously abusive then users will have to re-assess that equation. But it's the users' decision to make; not ours.
Users aren't making a conscious decision. Browser vendors are making the decision for them. Most people don't change the default settings, especially something that claims to make your browsing "safer".
We're talking about Chrome, a browser that comes as the default setting on zero major operating systems.
https://security.googleblog.com/2015/12/protecting-hundreds-...
I wonder if newer versions of SamsungBrowser use it.
No we aren't. We are talking about the Google Safe Browsing service. They are different things. One is a web browser, the other is a blacklist that any software can use.
It's used by Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Together those make up a majority of browsers.
Not necessarily true, your website being flagged by Google can get you blocked on multiple browsers. That's enough to destroy your traffic. Granted, I'd say 99% of these are legit flags from JS injections, etc.
Sure, you could use a browser that doesn't do this...but, you won't.
We do ask this. It's the entire reason we vote in representative democracies. It's absolutely nothing like the question you're replying to.
> In any society, we have some basic rules of 'good' and 'bad', and it's totally ok to test a website on those measures.
The basic rules of societies for what is 'good' and 'bad' about websites is something that you have entirely invented here in order to make an empty, unnecessarily dismissive argument.
Here's my answer: Google decides because our governments have abdicated responsibility for regulation or enforcement. Therefore, the responsibility is taken up by the groups in the best position to exploit it for money.
And you settle with a government which agrees to 'your' version of good and bad. But somehow, Google is not entitled to its opinion even if for trying to possibly make a safer internet.
> you have entirely invented here in order to make an empty, unnecessarily dismissive argument
On the contrary, I'd say you have invented your reasons for why Google is doing it (i.e., 'to exploit it for money') without any evidence. Of course, Google is here for profit, doesn't mean there's an evil motive for everything they do.
Of course, your judgement of good v/s bad is for good, and their judgement of good v/s bad is for bad. ;)
That's not how voting works. If the government agreed to my version of good or bad, the country would look a lot differently than it does.
> On the contrary, I'd say you have invented your reasons for why Google is doing it (i.e., 'to exploit it for money') without any evidence. Of course, Google is here for profit,
So you agree with me.
> doesn't mean there's an evil motive for everything they do.
No corporation has evil motives. I don't even know what that means. That it's trying to summon demons?
And I have no interest in explaining to you like 5 what is an evil corporation. Do a Google search.
Google, for the most parts, is the Internet, chrome, gmail, search engine, android, good lord even walking robots! We are lucky that they g+ failed miserably :D
Otherwise we'd not have Internet, we'd have Google, nothing in the world beyond it. Nobody to check it's power, except maybe the EU, but that's their jurisdiction.
I recently bought a macbook pro, whenever I visit google.com using macbook I get a small popup -> visit your privacy setting, no other platform did I ever get that popup. They apparently discriminate it. For work we use US network, and there I regularly see that popup, never on an Indian IP that I got that message. Apparently they think Indian's do not care much about their privacy. Too much for Don't be evil.
It may be surprising to those of us who hang out on HN, but Hotmail has over 360 million email customers. Yahoo (okay, okay) has over a quarter of a million. Yandex and QQ have dominant regional market share.
Access? Comcast, Verizon, I'm looking at you, at least in the U.S.
Backbone? Hi, AT&T, L3, NTT, <list of non-Google/Facebook companies>.
Amusing that you have a Macbook pro. I think there might be a $579B company with a huge market share of the mobile market (safari, not Chrome) sitting there.
Facts and actual data talk, not fear and rhetoric. The world has nuance that deserves credit.
When I said Google is the Internet, and you don't understand it, then I pity that you people have the ability to downvote comments on this site.
Not everyone in the world means literally, when I say GOogle is the Internet that means Google is so powerful a company that 90+% of search market is with them, yes doubleclick I am looking at you, gmail, youtube, android, chromebook, google books, self driving car, a robotic cheetah that runs 200 something km per hour. That is scary.
I am getting downvoted because the people who are downvoting don't understand what I am trying to say. yeah go ahead and downvote this and justify your actions. doesn't make the things I say less than the truth.
Every computer I see has google chrome and google as the default search engine, God knows they did a research I read which tells the gender of the person by the way the keep their phone in their hand, can't cite it here because I am short on time.
Google is scary. The kind of power they have, had it not been for the EU they would have been even more dangerous, thankfully and regretfully EU has authority only in the EU.
Ultimately everything in life is an opinion, all that matters is we do what we feel is right and in general isn't outright incorrect, just because you people have the ability to downvote comments doesn't make you more informed than I am, especially when you don't understand what i am trying to say or i am not clear at what I say, that doesn't give you the right to be derogatory though, but this is HN and that behaviour is expected.