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My experience being blocked by Google Safe Browsing (2022)

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Re: My experience being blocked by Google Safe Browsing (2022)

#11

Post by _cenw »

input_sh wrote: post #9
t344344 wrote: post #7

> hosted a Mastodon server on the domain Mastodon is often used to distribute illegal content. If you self host you need to be ready to deal with this stuff. Like with self hosted SMTP server. Not saying it is good or bad, just reality!

> It’s mostly for me and friends I know personally – nothing like the bigger, public ones. I'd agree with you if it had thousands of users, but not when the user count is 8. If you have 8 users on your SMTP server, damn easy to know with certainty if any of them did anything that might be considered malicious.

Mastodon, perhaps unwisely, replicates all media it encounters.

Re: My experience being blocked by Google Safe Browsing (2022)

#12

Post by thrdbndndn »

lionkor wrote: post #5

I feel the "i want my friends and family to be safe" is similar to the "but think of the kids!" excuse. Maybe its some kind of a Stockholm Syndrome variant of people using Chrome, but its definitely not healthy. I don't actually believe that it has blocked that many people from being phished, and I doubt that all the entries on that list are malicious. It seems like a system that was designed by someone to simply get…

The consensus, even among tech people, seems to be that this is a good thing. Sure, lots do argue it shouldn't be maintained by Google, but ultimately such list itself is fine.

I personally don't agree with, as I think modern browsers (not just Chrome) already do way too much handholding to a point that neutrality is inevitably lost.

I would go even further and say I don't like ideas like Firefox's/Brave's "Enhanced Tracking Protection" which blocks certain services with a handpick ruleset. Don't get me wrong, I block these trackers myself in uBlock Origin, but I don't like idea that a browser maintains an arbitrary list itself of what to block for the users.

Re: My experience being blocked by Google Safe Browsing (2022)

#13

Post by _cenw »

hulitu wrote: post #8

Google "Safe browsing" is the blatant excuse by Google to collect all your browsing history. Disabling it is behind dark patterns.

That's just plain wrong. Most SafeBrowsing checks are done locally against a list. They even have an API for it.

https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/v4#update-api-v4

Literally 5 seconds on your favorite search engine could have stopped you from embaressing yourself.

Re: My experience being blocked by Google Safe Browsing (2022)

#14

Post by input_sh »

arnaudsm wrote: post #2

Yikes, giving Google the power to block any website to the majority of humankind may not be the best idea.

What's even worse is that Firefox, Safari, Vivaldi, Brave, Instagram, other Google services (like Gmail and Search) all rely on this list in some capacity, though their delivery method may differ. It's got far bigger reach than Chromium alone.

Sneak in your competitor onto this list and they'll lose all of their traffic for as long as it takes them to convince someone at Google they've made a mistake.

Re: My experience being blocked by Google Safe Browsing (2022)

#15

Post by drpixie »

lionkor wrote: post #5

I feel the "i want my friends and family to be safe" is similar to the "but think of the kids!" excuse. Maybe its some kind of a Stockholm Syndrome variant of people using Chrome, but its definitely not healthy. I don't actually believe that it has blocked that many people from being phished, and I doubt that all the entries on that list are malicious. It seems like a system that was designed by someone to simply get…

Some things are worth protecting against, but most of the blocking I've seen has beeen sites that just don't conform with google's prefences. Given that there is a conflict between google's preferences and mine, there is a problem.

Re: My experience being blocked by Google Safe Browsing (2022)

#16

Post by [deleted] »

input_sh wrote: post #9
t344344 wrote: post #7

> hosted a Mastodon server on the domain Mastodon is often used to distribute illegal content. If you self host you need to be ready to deal with this stuff. Like with self hosted SMTP server. Not saying it is good or bad, just reality!

> It’s mostly for me and friends I know personally – nothing like the bigger, public ones. I'd agree with you if it had thousands of users, but not when the user count is 8. If you have 8 users on your SMTP server, damn easy to know with certainty if any of them did anything that might be considered malicious.

[deleted]

Re: My experience being blocked by Google Safe Browsing (2022)

#17

Post by literalAardvark »

_cenw wrote: post #11
input_sh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s mostly for me and friends I know personally – nothing like the bigger, public ones. I'd agree with you if it had thousands of users, but not when the user count is 8. If you have 8 users on your SMTP server, damn easy to know with certainty if any of them did anything that might be considered malicious.

Mastodon, perhaps unwisely, replicates all media it encounters.

Well that's... terrifying.

Re: My experience being blocked by Google Safe Browsing (2022)

#18

Post by _cenw »

literalAardvark wrote: post #17
_cenw wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon, perhaps unwisely, replicates all media it encounters.

Well that's... terrifying.

In reality, it barely makes a difference if you want to avoid hotlinking (and that has other bad privacy privacy implications, now all your users load bad content).

Law enforcement makes no difference between proxying, caching and storing indefinitely. At least not during all the steps that precede your hardware being seized.

Re: My experience being blocked by Google Safe Browsing (2022)

#19

Post by efdee »

lionkor wrote: post #5

I feel the "i want my friends and family to be safe" is similar to the "but think of the kids!" excuse. Maybe its some kind of a Stockholm Syndrome variant of people using Chrome, but its definitely not healthy. I don't actually believe that it has blocked that many people from being phished, and I doubt that all the entries on that list are malicious. It seems like a system that was designed by someone to simply get…

I often click links on phishing mails I get just for fun, and more often than not they result in webpages being blocked by Chrome. Anecdotal, but there you go.

Re: My experience being blocked by Google Safe Browsing (2022)

#20

Post by aww_dang »

t344344 wrote: post #7

> hosted a Mastodon server on the domain Mastodon is often used to distribute illegal content. If you self host you need to be ready to deal with this stuff. Like with self hosted SMTP server. Not saying it is good or bad, just reality!

Is illegal content relevant to phishing warnings?
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