Google - This site may harm your computer

Ian

Ian

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If you are searching on Google and get the error "This site may harm your computer." today, don't worry.


There seems to be a problem as every search on Google has been giving this error for the last half an hour:

Warning - visiting this web site may harm your computer!


I expect it will be fixed soon, but this is just a heads up :thumb: Here's a thread on Google's site from when it first started:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=42c9e9a7b2a1f60b&hl=en
 
I was getting that yesterday, looking for model steam trains :o

Don't laugh but I have this idea for an outdoor steam railway on me patio :D

But it will probably just stay an idea.

Seeing This at a shop in Greenwich Town centre got me thinking. £400.00 would buy the kit version and extra track to make an oval about 5 x 18 feet.

But no control method or rolling stock.....

I am rambling, ain't I?

Where were we? Oh yes, Google...
 
floppybootstomp said:
I am rambling, ain't I?
Click to expand...
And what better place to do it!

Got a friend who converted their loft just to use it for a model train layout.:thumb:
 
feckit said:
And what better place to do it!

Got a friend who converted their loft just to use it for a model train layout.:thumb:
Click to expand...

So did an uncle of mine. But oddly enough I've never seen it.

And yes, I do like walking, in answer to your post before you edited it ;)
 
This is apparently the reason - from Google:

"If you did a Google search between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST this morning, you likely saw that the message "This site may harm your computer" accompanied each and every search result. This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users.

What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. 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 this morning. 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. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.

Thanks to our team for their quick work in finding this. And again, our apologies to any of you who were inconvenienced this morning, and to site owners whose pages were incorrectly labelled. We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in to prevent it from happening again.

Thanks for your understanding.

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience "
Click to expand...
 
Odd. I was getting those messages late afternoon yesterday (Friday 30th).

Maybe them steam trains are harmful.... ;)
 
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