Google lists its flagship site as no longer ‘dangerous’ to malware
A day after Google said the homepage of its popular search engine was “partially dangerous” to malware, the company is now saying it’s safe to browse.
“Safe Browsing has not recently seen malicious content on google.com,” the Mountain View company said in its updated transparency report on Wednesday.
The company did warn in its report that consumers will still need to watch out for pages on google.com that could install malware or redirect users to “dangerous websites that install malware on visitors’ computers.”
Google did not respond to a request for comment.
Rob Enderle with advisory services firm Enderle Group said that any high-trafficked site, especially Google, will be a “huge target” for malware.
“If someone can embed malware into the site, they are going to do it,” Enderle said.
But Google has been “incredibly aggressive” at keeping its site safer and by being transparent about potential security risks, Enderle said, adding the moves are a form of defense for the company.
A report by Google and UC Berkeley researchers said it looked at 760,935 “hijacking incidents” that were labeled as such by Google Safe Browsing and Search Quality from July 2014 to June 2015. The report showed that more communication with webmasters reduced the risk.
“We observe that direct communication with webmasters increases the likelihood of cleanup by over 50 percent and reduces infection lengths by at least 62 percent,” the report said.
Source | SFGate
