Google and Malware
This has been around a while, but I’ve been noticing it a bit more. Google has a notice on suspicious sites listed in search results that warn of possible spyware. In fact, if you click on the link, it warns you before allowing you to go on to the site, just to be sure you notice the problem.
Spyware is of course a major problem, and I can appreciate the protection on some levels. But as a website owner I feel for those who may have been misidentified. I just don’t know if it happens enough to be an issue.
Keep in mind that my opinion of sites that deliberately install spyware is quite low. I’d love there to be some solid legislation creating penalties for installing spyware without permission, or making it really hard to uninstall. No one has rights to install things on my computer without my permission.
Of course, the best defense is a good offense, as they say, and you can’t trust Google to know all the sites that may cause problems. That’s why I always tell people not to allow ActiveX controls to install without their permission (ideally nearly at all, very few exceptions, but some can’t handle that), and to consider which browser they should use for security reasons.
Ideal, of course, would be for sites to be automatically notified if there’s a spyware issue suspected with them. Hard to know about it otherwise.
