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This is what happens when you give too much power to one company. And what is the appeal process? Asking for help on Twitter as the founder of a huge project

This is what happens when you give too much power to one company. And what is the appeal process? Asking for help on Twitter as the founder of a huge project like PHP? https://twitter.com/rasmus/status/393258264034422785 https://twitter.com/rasmus/status/393258264034422785

eugenesu 13y ago
WebMaster Tools really need some improvements - there is no way to re-scan suspected page fast and get more info about the issue. If even Rasmus was unable to get this resolved fast, imagine regular webmasters in the same situation.
dchest 13y ago
This is what happens when you give too much power to one company. What happens? Is it bad that that Google protects users from malware and notifies webmasters that their website was compromised?
- alphadevx 13y ago
  It's very heavy handed. It has not been 100% verified that the site was compromised, and a lot of very technically smart PHP community members are looking hard at this. It may prove to be a false positive or otherwise, but in the meantime: 1. Google is blocking access to the site in Chrome. 2. Firefox is warning users that php.net is not to be trusted (it uses the same list of infected sites provided by Google). 3. Google is warning users on Google Search that "This site may harm your computer.". 4. Google's appeals process is slow and cumbersome. So yeah, that is a lot of power for one company. If this happened to your website due to, for example a false positive, you would be pretty unhappy. Only a high profile project like PHP gets this kind of attention, but I'd happily wager that many smaller websites suffer the same faith every day.
  - dchest 13y ago
    This is exactly what happens when your website serves malware. Unhappy about it? Don't serve malware from your website.
    - alphadevx 13y ago
      And what about the false positive scenario?
      - dchest 13y ago
        I don't know. Any examples? Perhaps, you should ask the victims of such false positives.
        thisisnotatest 13y ago
        If you can find any.
      - pilif 13y ago
        A site we once had under development was incorrectly flagged. I reported the error via the webmaster tools and after less than 20 minutes, the warning went away.
    - nilved 13y ago
      When your website serves what Google considers malware, you mean.
- bowlofpetunias 13y ago
  Google doesn't notify anybody, you have to find out for yourself the hard way. And after that, it forces the owners of the site to register with Google and use Google services just to even figure out why, and to get their sites unflagged. And that is after the owner even figured out how and where to contact Google.
  - dchest 13y ago
    Yes, they do. If you've signed up for Webmaster Tools, you'll get notified by email. They don't force anyone to sign up. If you do nothing other than fixing your website, eventually Google will check it again and remove from blacklist. Seriously, what's your complaint? If you don't want to get blacklisted, don't let your site be hacked. If your site is hacked, and you're complaining that Google blacklisted it and notified you about it, you're dumb. And guess what -- they provide this service (and also pay the real person to review your re-listing request) for FREE.
  - MertsA 13y ago
    Google sends out emails to a bunch of different addresses like webmaster@domain.com, abuse@domain.com, etc and notifies anyone signed up through Google Webmaster tools. The only improvement I can think of would be if they notified whoever was listed after doing a WHOIS of the domain but that's a little hard to automate. >And after that, it forces the owners of the site to register with Google and use Google services just to even figure out why, and to get their sites unflagged. Google forces you to prove that you own the domain before they give you any information that they don't release publicly. How else do you suggest they go about not releasing everything publicly? Also, all you have to do as a site owner is click on the safe browsing diagnostic link and go from there.
    - david_acw 13y ago
      In our case the email alerts went out 12 hours after they identified our site and started giving the warning to users. We got several calls from customers before being notified by Google.

eugenesu 13y ago

WebMaster Tools really need some improvements - there is no way to re-scan suspected page fast and get more info about the issue. If even Rasmus was unable to get this resolved fast, imagine regular webmasters in the same situation.

dchest 13y ago

This is what happens when you give too much power to one company. What happens? Is it bad that that Google protects users from malware and notifies webmasters that their website was compromised?

alphadevx 13y ago
It's very heavy handed. It has not been 100% verified that the site was compromised, and a lot of very technically smart PHP community members are looking hard at this. It may prove to be a false positive or otherwise, but in the meantime: 1. Google is blocking access to the site in Chrome. 2. Firefox is warning users that php.net is not to be trusted (it uses the same list of infected sites provided by Google). 3. Google is warning users on Google Search that "This site may harm your computer.". 4. Google's appeals process is slow and cumbersome. So yeah, that is a lot of power for one company. If this happened to your website due to, for example a false positive, you would be pretty unhappy. Only a high profile project like PHP gets this kind of attention, but I'd happily wager that many smaller websites suffer the same faith every day.
- dchest 13y ago
  This is exactly what happens when your website serves malware. Unhappy about it? Don't serve malware from your website.
  - alphadevx 13y ago
    And what about the false positive scenario?
    - dchest 13y ago
      I don't know. Any examples? Perhaps, you should ask the victims of such false positives.
      - thisisnotatest 13y ago
        If you can find any.
    - pilif 13y ago
      A site we once had under development was incorrectly flagged. I reported the error via the webmaster tools and after less than 20 minutes, the warning went away.
  - nilved 13y ago
    When your website serves what Google considers malware, you mean.
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
Google doesn't notify anybody, you have to find out for yourself the hard way. And after that, it forces the owners of the site to register with Google and use Google services just to even figure out why, and to get their sites unflagged. And that is after the owner even figured out how and where to contact Google.
- dchest 13y ago
  Yes, they do. If you've signed up for Webmaster Tools, you'll get notified by email. They don't force anyone to sign up. If you do nothing other than fixing your website, eventually Google will check it again and remove from blacklist. Seriously, what's your complaint? If you don't want to get blacklisted, don't let your site be hacked. If your site is hacked, and you're complaining that Google blacklisted it and notified you about it, you're dumb. And guess what -- they provide this service (and also pay the real person to review your re-listing request) for FREE.
- MertsA 13y ago
  Google sends out emails to a bunch of different addresses like webmaster@domain.com, abuse@domain.com, etc and notifies anyone signed up through Google Webmaster tools. The only improvement I can think of would be if they notified whoever was listed after doing a WHOIS of the domain but that's a little hard to automate. >And after that, it forces the owners of the site to register with Google and use Google services just to even figure out why, and to get their sites unflagged. Google forces you to prove that you own the domain before they give you any information that they don't release publicly. How else do you suggest they go about not releasing everything publicly? Also, all you have to do as a site owner is click on the safe browsing diagnostic link and go from there.
  - david_acw 13y ago
    In our case the email alerts went out 12 hours after they identified our site and started giving the warning to users. We got several calls from customers before being notified by Google.