Google May harm your computer: I can Relate!

  What goes around comes around Google.

That old cliche couldn’t be more applicable after today’s giant cockup which caused every Web page categorized by Google to be flagged as potentially harmful to one’s computer earlier today.

Google’s blanket warning also covered the company’s search engine. The problem, which was quickly rectified, lasted 55 minutes Saturday morning.

Google vice-president Marissa Meyer chalked the problem up to “human error.”

The mass Google warnings highlight the unusual amount of power the company has over the Web. Google is the Web’s de facto search engine, which makes it the ultimate traffic cop for users.

When missives are issued from the company’s Mountain View, Calif. headquarters, Web users listen.

This is a potential problem. Google’s error is a case in point. It may have caused users to hesitate before clicking on virtually any Web site this morning, leading to potential lost sales for e-commerce sites for example.

Such warnings are particularly painful for bloggers and other non-techies whose sites are flagged as potentially dangerous.

I ran into such a problem last summer, when a similar warning was attached to my blog unbeknownst to me. (Spammers take note – my e-mail address is readily accessible to any and all Web users on this every site.)

The warning, as it turns out, was issued by a non-profit organization called StopBadware.org, which happens to be a Google partner, in June.

It caused me weeks of grief as I am not a Web designer or developer and therefore couldn’t find the problem. It also caused a predictable decline in traffic.

As it turns out, StopBadware.org was right to issue the warning. A visit to this blog around the mid-point last year would have denigrated the computer performance of my blog readers. To this day, I don’t know the cause.

Some out-of-work malware writer, presumably, launched a nasty virus that looked for holes on sites such as my own.

Little direction was given by Google or StopBadware.org as to how to find the problem. I was informed of the following: “According to our review of your website, your site contains a potentially damaging exploit.  For example, the source code for kevinrestivo.com contains the following suspicious code:”

Needless to say, the malware writer accomplished his or her mission. StopBadware.org offered limited assistance. I was more or less told the following:

“We strongly recommend removing any code that is currently or has the potential to distribute badware and securing your site against future code injections. Otherwise, it is likely that your website will be hacked again. If your site has been hacked, then simply removing injected code from your site is not enough.”

Gee thanks. To solve the problem, I eventually called in a favor from a friend of mine who trawled the MySQL database that powers the back end of this blog.

Lesson learned. If you’re going to operate a Web site of any sort, it’s user beware. Bloggers should be prepared for the worst if they’re not already. This is a basic premise of ownership.

Here are a number of points and recommendations Web site owners and blog operators should also heed:

• Work with your hosting provider to properly secure your site and/or blog platform. To be fair, StopBadware.org did eventually issue the same warning.
• Regularly update your Web site/blog platform. In my case, I should’ve had Wordpress 2.5 installed to better protect myself against attacks. The latest and greatest platform is now version 2.7.
• Diversify your Web life. Increasingly, Google is a single point of failure for Web users. This is potentially dangerous. Web users should experiment with other services to mitigate dependency and potential disruption in the future.
• Separately, Google is missing a revenue opportunity. In other words, the company could have a service support team ready to review code and help me solve the problem. I would’ve happily paid for such a service. My hoster, bluehost.com, after a cursory search couldn’t find the problem and wouldn’t venture too far down the repair path with me either.

[tags] Google, malware, StopBadware.org [/tags]