A human coding error at Google today led to nearly every other website in search being labelled across the world as malicious, even Google’s blog.
An apparent system error left millions of visitors to the site puzzled when links to all search results were flagged with the warning ‘This site may harm your computer’.
It is thought the site had erroneously identified all other websites – and some of its own pages – as containing malicious software or ‘malware’.
The glitch, which prevented internet users from directly clicking through to search results, was fixed within 30 minutes although users of Google’s email service Gmail have since reported finding genuine messages sent mistakenly to spam folders.
The errors prompted panic among web surfers who at first feared the popular search engine had suffered some kind of major failure that could have had serious implications for internet commerce.
This is what people saw, and if you wanted to get to a site you had to bypass Google search and enter the URL you wanted manually. According to Google’s blog it was ”/” a piece of code put in the wrong place. I make HTML errors a lot and readers are kind enough to point them out.  Here is StopBadware’s explanation.
the unrepentent hippie found a Republican site (The American Thinker) posting in a dither, convinced Google was out to get them.
Interesting how an error like this can cause panic and paranoia in just over 1/2 hour.
Legitimate sites get blocked all the time and there is little outcry. Right now Google’s blog service is blocking a Saudi blog (the writer is a Christian who has been arrested again). The Saudi government censored his page during his prior arrests and his current arrest, but why has Google blocked it for terms of service? The blogger discussion page is sadly quiet, and Google hasn’t answered.
This blog is under review due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations and is open to authors only http://christforsaudi.blogspot.com/
28 year old Hamoud Bin Saleh was arrested before for writing about his conversion. It took The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information and discussion at an UN inter-faith meeting sponsored by Saudi Arabi to get this man out of prison.
Yet a coding error that results in a half hour of search inconvenience is some kind of political plot in some people’s minds, while we haven’t the time or inclination to ask Google why they have made the decision they have regarding Hamoud Bin Saleh’s blog. The error affected individual users, given how discombobulating for them it was, perhaps we can take a moment and ask Google about another individual.
I can’t get into the group to ask Google directly, so I will ask here.
Would you please explain why Hamoud Bin Saleh’s blog is listed as violating your terms of service? Thank you.
via: Voice of the Martyrs
