Monday, May 14, 2012

This Site May Harm Your Computer



Oh Lordy.
New Colleague X (did I mention I have a new job?) decided to google the new boss, and discovered that this blog had been blacklisted for being "harmful".
Instead of seeing this stuff it came up with this message in firefox..

Reported Attack Page!
This web page at killerbees.co.uk has been reported as an attack page and has been blocked based on your security preferences.

"Oh my", I thought, "'Reported Attack Page!' that sounds serious, and it has an exclamat!on mark and three capital letters."

D'y'know what it was? A little investigation revealed that it was a link to the bileblog (not linked here for the obvious reason!) which had some kind of malware on it, apparently.

Whats worse is that in Google's search results it says "This Site May Harm Your Computer" more capitals, it must be Bad.
Let me put the record straight, this site won't "Harm Your Computer", or anyone else's, but if you follow the links eventually you may get to a site which might, in fact Google's own diagnostic page say:
Of the 50 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 0 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2012-05-05, and suspicious content was never found on this site within the past 90 days.
That's right, "Zero pages", and "suspicious content was never found on this site"

I have to say that I was surprised at the draconian and alarmist reaction, surely when someone clicks the link that should be the point at which the browser screams "Reported Attack Page!".


In honour of this hyperbole and lack of perspective I have replaced the sub title of my blog.


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I know nothing, I'm not a fortune teller, and you'd be insane to think that I am. This disclaimer was cribbed from an email footer I once received. It is so ridiculous I had to have it for myself.

Statements in this blog that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements including, without limitation, statements regarding my expectations, objectives, anticipations, plans, hopes, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward looking statements include risks and uncertainties such as any unforeseen event or any unforeseen system failures, and other risks. It is important to note that actual outcomes could differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements.

Danny Angus Copyright © 2006-2013 (OMG that's seven years of this nonsense)