Is Google Falsely Flagging Harmless Sites?

PC World ^ | January, 2009 | Jeremy Kirk

[WilliamofCarmichael]

StopBadware.org is run by Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Oxford University's Internet Institute, and vendor partners such as Google, Sun Microsystems, and Lenovo.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

This old PC World article asks Is Google Falsely Flagging Harmless Sites? and says

StopBadware.org is run by Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Oxford University's Internet Institute, and vendor partners such as Google, Sun Microsystems, and Lenovo.

Fine. We need them hats off to them but..

I have a question -- entirely mine and is based entirely on my opinions.

Harvard, google, Lenovo (ain't that Red China?), . . . .

Harvard? Cass Sunstein works there and has a big time hate-on for Free Republic and his (IMO) lies about Free Republic is his viagra.

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University

runs stopbadware.org and considers itself a kind of "Neighborhood Watch" aimed at fighting badware.

Turns out that a site search for Cass Sunstein indicates that he is involved in the (IMO) policing of the Internet.

Here is something that I have oft-posted.. it's from the time when he published "Republic.com" and he's a long-time friend of Obama's from when he worked at the U. of Chicago.

Here's how President Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and author of "Repulblic.com," Cass Sunstein, describes FreeRepublic.com as "group polarization," where people segregate themselves so effectively online with other like-minded thinkers that they create an echo chamber where the group's worst and most malevolent opinions get reinforced and strengthened. "We might want to consider," Sunstein startlingly told the Times recently, "the possibility of ways of requiring or encouraging sites to link to opposing viewpoints."

He recently left the Administration to become an employee of Harvard. I thought of him when I read that a group at Harvard was involved in the posting of warnings on web sites.

Is he getting the "Neighborhood Watch" to call the police on FReepres, et al.?

[butlerweave]

Lenovo put tons of Malware ,Spyware etc on there new computers

[soycd]

It always boils down to pi$$ poor software, wherever it may be.

Moron Class coders today are clueless to solid programming practices.

[Steely Tom]

Google is deeply in bed with the government, which means with the Obama administration.

They do what will ingratiate them to their master.

[lonestar67]

I will say this and maybe I should make this a separate post.

I followed this problem with some interest.

I got my first warning from Google yesterday about this website being a malware source.

I immediately went to the google malware reporting page.

I reported that google.com was a malware website.

I then added to my comment for the item being reported:

Stop doing evil Google. You are targeting conservative sites and trying to censor the internet. That is wrong.

I have yet to get a repeat of that warning since I posted that report to Google Malware site.

I recommend that Freepers do this when they see the warning. I think what is being done to Free Republic is outrageous. I do not think it is an accident.

The site:

https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_badware/

[Brad from Tennessee]

FROM SALON (2010):

Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama’s closest confidants. Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama’s head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs.” In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-“independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems “false conspiracy theories” about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens’ faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper’s abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here.

Sunstein advocates that the Government’s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.” He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called “independent” credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging (on the ground that those who don’t believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government). . .

http://www.salon.com/2010/01/15/sunstein_2/

[TexasCajun]

Thanks for the quick response to what ever caused the head-aches.

I couldn't stand it, I had to go to my Android cell phone to post comments.

Can you share if you guys found some maleware or just something Google did?

[biggredd1]

I get a warning when I check “gateway pundit”

[catnipman]

These grossly counterproductive google false alarms are now happening for many, many websites. Google safe search is now not just checking the websites themselves, but their LINKS to other websites, and if THOSE websites are “unsafe”, then google considers the referring website “unsafe” too. This is a total nightmare for any kind of website that accepts public posts that include links, and quite frankly, i don’t see how google can rationally keep the chains of “unsafe” sites from cascading indefinitely in any useful fashion.

Bottom line, excessive false alarms like these simply result in turning off the warning features in browsers and/or ignoring the alarms as most likely being erroneous. Google needs to realize that their safe search service would be MUCH more useful if they missed a few bad sites (which they are always going to anyway) and concentrate on eliminating false alarms that trash the confidence levels of their warnings. Basically, if google keeps crying wolf over and over again when there are no wolves, no one’s going to pay attention to their BS warnings anymore, even if google does happen to detect the occasional wolf.

[ctdonath2]

Google flagging FreeRepublic happens at times, has happened for years. Most likely somebody posted a link to a malware page, Google’s web-crawler found the link, and marked the linking page’s host site (freerepublic.com) as risky. It happens, it clears up. All automated, nothing malicious.

It’s when you can’t get to FR at all, ever again, that you need be very concerned.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks WilliamofCarmichael.

[Pearls Before Swine]

So, what’s the problem with disabling the warnings on Chrome and/or Firefox? It’s in the Options Menu. I bet that they’ll eventually upgrade the browsers so that you can enter sites that you think are OK, as an exceptions list.

[SkyDancer]

Not only that, they’ve hijacked my search engine Duckduckgo many times.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

Fix the problem (especially if it's ideological and hate driven) and I can continue mentioning FR postings to people (friends and strangers) w/o having to explain, "Ah, don't let that warning scare you."

[Jim Robinson]

The worst thing we found was someone posted a link to an image that (unknown to the poster) was hosted on a site that was blacklisted by google. This has happened in the past and the only page red flagged was the one with the post in question. And as soon as we were alerted to it, we’d pull the post. No problem.

This time, for reasons unknown, they blacklisted our entire site. Millions of unaffected posts blacklisted. And we had to jump through their hoops to get unblacklisted. Never had to do that before.

Appear onerous to me.

[OL Hickory]

I saw the black diamonds and question marks on other conservative sites as well

[rockrr]

I wouldn’t believe Gargoyle if they said that water was wet or the sun rises in the east.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Sunstein has apparently never been here.

[KrisKrinkle]

Any lawyers on here?

Can they be sued for libel for saying a site is dangerous when it isn’t?

[WilliamofCarmichael]

re: This time, for reasons unknown, they blacklisted our entire site. Millions of unaffected posts blacklisted

This thread was one that was flagged as dangerous.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3280471/posts

I used it to search stopbadware Clearinghouse Search during the time all those warnings were placed on almost everything Free Republic.

The Clearinghouse Search replied to my search that the URL matched the list..

This is not my search but it is what Clearinghouse Search displayed during the time almost everything Free Republic was flagged as dangerous. Clearinghouse Search

What does match is this partial string.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/

There could be reasons to have to flag everything in a folder -- or on the entire site -- but that would be the exception I would imagine.

So someone ran their system with the parameters to flag everything in http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/ and other folders.

Accident?