Jan 31 2009
Google May Harm Your Computer
I think Google is having a bit of a FAIL day. I just did a search for “prerogative” to ensure I was using the right spelling (that first ‘r’ occasionally catches me out) only to be told that Wikipedia may harm my computer:
I thought, eh.. never thought I’d see the day that wikipedia is caught out by spyware! However, I checked the source and there was no sign of any malicious code. So, on the off chance, I googled “cheese”, and then “jemjabella”. All links are showing “This site may harm your computer.”
I wonder how long it’s been like this for…
Update: it’s been fixed.
Warning
This post is over 6 months old. This means that, despite my best intentions, it may no longer be accurate. Age, motherhood, experience, loss... these things have all changed me from when this blog was started back in the heady (ha) days of my youth.
As much as I would like to go back and edit 10 years of archives to provide an insight into the 'me' of now — to update coding snippets and revise website advice — it would probably take years to do so (by which point I'd have to start again!) This would defeat the point of keeping these archives anyway.
Please take these posts for what they are: a brief look into my past, my history, my journey.
31 Responses so far
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Hahaha that’s so funny!!!
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A couple of minutes I think. Threads started popping up on forums about 5 minutes ago.
Even Google’s own pages/sites come up with it. Gah. :(
The world is ending.
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Yeah, I seemed to be clicking links fine. Then after eating pizza I discover that almost ever search output comes up with "this site may harm your computer". It’s fine when your type the URL in the address bar though. Hmm…
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I was doing a search from something and got this earlier today. The site didn’t seem like it would have spyware, but you never know…
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The same thing happened to me. I was too scared to click on them in case I got attacked by viruses. When I searched my site though, nothing like that came up :S
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It wasn’t me! I did not break google! :)
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Did they fix it yet? Because I’m searching google for random things right now and the "may harm your computer" message isn’t showing on anything.
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Fixed :)
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By the way, my first thought after I started reading this was "lol. A prerogative may harm your computer!"
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This isn’t affecting everyone. My friends Karly and Nicole are having no problems, which makes me mad. Why do I have to be the one who can’t Google anything? :P
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Nice to see you are on the ball, Jem *hugs*
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Fail. Need I say more?
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@Clem: it was affecting everyone that was using the UK version, but it was fixed… if you’re searching for the same stuff as before (when it was "broken") you’ll need to do a forced refresh (control + F5) on the results page.
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It was affecting every Google, not just the UK.
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Unfortunately I was unable to check as I automagically get redirected to the UK version…!
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lol this morning my Dad was like, "Ahhh, this site will NOT harm the computer!!!"
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Exact same thing happened to me.
Every site i went on, from google said it would harm my computer.
It wouldnt even let me view the site!
Th thaught it was my computer… But obviously not! :) Feww!! -
Someone obviously typed google into Google. DON’T YOU KNOW THAT BREAKS THE INTENETS??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?/1?1/1/1/
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Are you going to submit this to the FAILblog?
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Like I posted on Ben’s blog, I feel gypped for having missed that. :(
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Creepy, I hope you didn’t lose (many) visitors for this :o
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aww, even google has to break down every once in a while!
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Waah, I missed it. :(
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I can’t believe I missed it. Apparently it was caused by a misplaced backslash :O
Lol @ Amelie’s comment!
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Ohoh, I agree with Cristina! Fail blog needs this! LOL
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My mom was Googling stuff this morning and was all like "THIS SITE MAY HARM MY COMPUTER!!!!11!!1" And asked me to fix it. I said "Um. I doubt EVERY site will harm your computer." But she didn’t believe me.
… She believes *you* though. :P
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I noticed that yesterday. Nice one, Google :P
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Great work google. I found out about it today, reading this article.
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I noticed it too, glad it’s fixed though, I couldn’t go anywhere but to that ugly ‘this site may harm your computer’ page without having to type the (sometimes long) URL into the address bar…
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You gotta love Google!
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I was freaking out when this happened. I had to use Yahoo for about an hour.
