Some web hosts use Safe Browsing to automatically perm-ban any sites on the list. I've been banned from Heroku for a couple years at this point because one of my sites got added to Safe Browsing as malware and Heroku's systems just automatically perm-banned me (and to make things worse, in the ban email they tell you to send ban appeals to just bounces).
Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup
281–290 of 558 posts
Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not misunderstanding anything, the fact that Google's own legitimate emails are flagged as phishing by their own filters is pretty telling about the reliability of the whole thing. The fact that you can come up with a plausible explanation to why it happened doesn't make it any less damning. But of course, they don't flag google.com as a spammy domain and stop all emails coming from it, right? PS: Im not sure ex…
"the fact that Google's own legitimate emails are flagged as phishing by their own filters is pretty telling about the reliability of the whole thing" It detects blacklisted URLs in emails and sends warnings, retroactively given that sites are caught some indeterminate time after they might have been communicated (flagging if you have interacted with the email and thus might have been compromised). It seems like it w…
If Google flagging its own e-mails is your idea of a perfectly reliable phishing detection system, I don't think we are going to find much common ground.
For what it's worth, it's all true :) Good luck to you.
Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup
#283This reminds me of email blacklisting. When I was "young" I operated an email server for 6000 users. Keeping that server and our domain away from blacklisting was a full-time job.
It wasn't enough to secure your server: Any spam or virus coming from the internal network through that email server could potentially blacklist us. Basically, you had to treat your users as untrusted, and run anti-spam and anti-virus filtering that was as good as whatever the rest of the Internet was running.
IIRC, although blacklisting was done by non-profits, it was still rather opaque: Blacklisting should be traumatizing, so that you (and your higher ups) are forced to do a proper risk assessment and actually implement it. It was also opaque to make it harder for the bad guys to move quickly.
I hate the increasing influence that big tech has on small tech. But keeping web and email safe and clean is a cat-and-mouse game, which, unfortunately, also adds burden to the good folks.
Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Google's desire for scale, scale, scale, meant that interactions must be handled through The Algorithms That's fine when you're a plucky growth startup. Less fine when you run half the internet. If Google doesn't want to admit it's a mature business and pivot into margin-eating, but risk-reducing support staffing, then okay: break it back up into enough startup-sized chunks that the response failure of one isn't an…
I agree. Google is such a large behemoth who actively tries to avoid customer support if they can. Splitting it to smaller business with a bit of autonomy and not having to rely on ad money fueling everything else means those smaller businesses have to give a shit about customers and compete on even ground. Same applies to Facebook and other tech companies. The root issue is taking huge profits from area of business…
> However anti-trust in US has eroded significantly.
Perhaps compared to the 40s-70s, but certainly not compared to the Reagan era. Starting with the Obama administration, there's been a strong rebirth of the anti-trust movement and it's only gaining momentum (see many recent examples of blocked mergers)[1].
[1] https://hbr.org/2017/12/the-rise-fall-and-rebirth-of-the-u-s...
Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup
#285If their claim is false, then is it, in any jurisdiction, libelous? Maybe, legislation to bring consequences for false claims will help ensure algorithms, and the support teams that monitor them, do a better job. In an internet focused world, especially one with lock downs, wiping sites off of the internet with false claims is a heinously bad act.
There may be a number of civil causes of action available...
But litigate against a multi-billion dollar tech company? good luck.
These companies are borderline immune to prosecution by the government, much less a small business.
Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a very obvious reason not to do that: if you apparently maliciously cry wolf a few times, people won't trust your cries any more, and, for example, other browsers might choose to stop using the Google Safe Browsing list.
No, I don't think that's how it would play out. 1. Google bans parler.com on Jan. 8th by adding it as an "unsafe URL" to their blacklist. 2. Mozilla issues statement: "While we don't believe it was prudent to use the Safe Browsing blacklist for this purpose, given recent events, we will not be unblocking parler.com, and do not currently deem it necessary to maintain a separate safe browsing list." 3. Something simila…
I can't tell if this is true or not - was parler.com actually blocked with this mechanism?
Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup
#287The mitigations suggested are easier said than done. In particular, domains can't share cookies which means switching domains likely means logging out any users that are logged, and losing any local settings. Likewise splitting your site between different domains makes it much more difficult to share state (such as whether you are logged in) between the sites.
Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup
#288We seriously need to break up Google. This is a chokepoint for innovation, should not be controlled by one company, and has serious downstream consequences on economic growth as a nation.
"as a nation"?
Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup
#289We got hit by this as well. Very similar story to this and others shared in this thread: Use an S3 bucket for user uploads - and Google then marks the bucket as unsafe. In our case a user had clicked “Save link as...” on a Google Drive file. This saves an HTML file with the Google login page in some cases (since downloading the file requires you to be logged in). The user then proceeded to upload that HTML file. Then it was automatically marked since it looked like we were phishing the Google login page.
It should be noted that Firefox uses the Google banlist as well so switching browsers does not work!
Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aside from abusive dominent position there is no law they would break. When you download and use chrome you ACCEPT the Terms and Conditions of Google. There is no law that prevents a web browser from blocking access to a website or modifying the page . If the TOS stipulate « pages may differ from the original or be subject to third party software » , they are in within their rights and the customer accepted it when h…
I'm not a US citizen, but just 5 min of scanning US laws makes me think that there are basis for a lawsuit. Essential facilities doctrine seems to be appropriate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_facilities_doctrine
Google has already been condemned by UE for this type of issue for 150M. That's literally nothing , at least not enough to hit their wallet.
This type of battle take months if not years in court and cost millions of dollars.
Google products can be shipped and removed in a few weeks , far beyond the reach of operation of the current judiciary system.
Today the problem is GHS , tomorrow it'll be "GSuite Safe Account" or "Youtube Safe Video" etc...
There is no point in taking Google to court just for a "one time" condemnation, it's a systematic issue that is tied to Google itself.