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.
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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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.









