I don’t aware of this feature in Google Desktop until one day it warns me about a potential harmful website. I thought all the way Google Desktop is doing indexing only. See the screen shot below:
At first, I thought this is something to do with the Google search engine. Eventually after a few times of this warning, I only realized it is something to do with the Google Desktop. It looks like the Google Desktop detects those sites based on the information from StopBadware.org. Badware could be some sorts of spyware, adware, viruses or Trojan horse programs
The website is http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums. You can try click it and see whether your browser can catch this or not. However, the website doesn't seems like have potential thread but to be safe, I didn't continue browsing in that website.
I think “Safe Browsing” is turned on by default. If not, you can perform the following instructions:
- Go to preference page.
- Click the “Other” tab at the top.
- Tick the “Enable Safe Browsing” check box.
- Click “Save Preferences” to apply the change.
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5 Comments:
Hi Champdog,
Thanks for spreading awareness about dangerous websites and ways to avoid them!
One quick correction - it's actually Google, not StopBadware, that flags the dangerous sites. Google independently checks the web for badware and badware-linking code, and places warnings in its own search results, and in Google Desktop. StopBadware comes in to that process simply to help site owners who want to remove the warnings in learning about badware and getting the warnings removed.
Many sites that are the subject of Google's warnings have been the victims of a malicious hacking attack, in which code linking directly to badware through exploits was inserted onto an otherwise innocent, but poorly secured, website. Another common reason for otherwise innocent sites to be flagged by Google is if badware is being distributed through third party provided content such as ads provided by an ad network.
Checking out our records on digitalspy, it looks like Google isn't currently reporting that site to us: http://www.stopbadware.org/reports/container?reportident=479683
If you or your readers are interested in more information about badware, we've got a lot of educational resources and info on our website http://www.stopbadware.org.
thanks,
Erica
StopBadware staff
Hi Erica, thanks for your clarification between Google and StopBadware. Recently I encounter more and more sites that have been flagged by Google as badware.
Two days ago I was browsing www.digitalspy.co.uk forums and I got the Adware32.virtumonde virus.It's a nightmare, I can't get rid of it. I had had other browsers open to other sites such as Yahoo and Facebook,so I was not sure which site was the problem.
I took out my old laptop and again I visited the same sites.Just like last time, I was scrolling down a page on www.digitalspy.co.uk forums pages and I got the virtumonde virus again!
I think something is definitely wrong with that website, this is too much of a coincidence.
Sorry, the link I put in to digitalspy is not working.It's the same link you gave earlier-
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums
I happened to be reading the Big Brother forums.
Not very frequent but I did come across some sites that being warned recently... Thanks for sharing. :)
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