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Thanks HN: Lessons learned after Google nearly killed my site

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Re: Thanks HN: Lessons learned after Google nearly killed my site

#291

Post by colejohnson66 »

lostcolony wrote: post #248
frutmonkey wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legally, every web domain must have a contact point when you register. They shouldn't have to webcrawl for the contact info. Then again, they are already the kings of webcrawling....

Yeah; that was my original thought, but not sure how readily available that is without reaching out to the registrar. Certainly, the registrar could be reached out to.

Doesn’t the WHOIS info have it? Even if it’s masked by the registrar’s privacy features, there’s still some email address that can be used.

Re: Thanks HN: Lessons learned after Google nearly killed my site

#292

Post by lostcolony »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #291
lostcolony wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah; that was my original thought, but not sure how readily available that is without reaching out to the registrar. Certainly, the registrar could be reached out to.

Doesn’t the WHOIS info have it? Even if it’s masked by the registrar’s privacy features, there’s still some email address that can be used.

It should, yes. Hard to confirm given, for instance, this site uses whoisguard to hide it, but agreed, that should also be sent to.

Re: Thanks HN: Lessons learned after Google nearly killed my site

#293

Post by jhugo »

stonecraftwolf wrote: post #290
jhugo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been banned by the Circumventing Systems policy before (a few years ago), with no explanation of what system I circumvented or how the ban was triggered. Two appeals via the Google system failed (with generic responses) so I reached out to an ex-colleague who now works there and she escalated it internally, and I was magically unblocked, but still have no idea why it happened. Recently launched a new startup and…

So wait — you were banned by Google, then years later banned by Facebook before even trying to run ads? That almost sounds like they’re sharing ban lists

I think it's just coincidental, especially since the companies for which I was trying to run ads have no connection to each other (apart from me working there). It made me realise just how common these arbitrary automated bans are though.

Re: Thanks HN: Lessons learned after Google nearly killed my site

#295

Post by exikyut »

noisy_boy wrote: post #277
exikyut wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have needed to be done through Chromium in non-headless (likely full Xvfb) mode, with step screenshots, and screenshot comparison (always flaky!), for the Safe Browsing interstitial to have generated an alert.

How about headless mode with validating response by parsing expected output? I don't have a lot of experience so not sure if what I'm saying is feasible.

FWIW, the Safe Browsing interstitials are managed by a slightly disorientating bunch of browser/renderer interactions mostly initiated by C++ that basically delivers chrome://interstitials/safebrowsing?type=malware instead of the page in question, IIRC with the renderer setup so you can't right-click and view source etc.

From a pure perspective, yes, you should be able to use headless mode and run some sort of validation on the HTML. That would make things really straightforward.

In practice... the easiest explanation is that I just spent about 35 minutes trying to find a live test/example safe-browsing trigger so I could check whether right-click is disabled, and I couldn't find one. Even after firing up a separate Chrome profile and verifying Safe Browsing was enabled at chrome://safe-browsing/, modifying /etc/hosts to point http://malware.testing.google.test/testing/malware/* anywhere did not work, none of the links https://testsafebrowsing.appspot.com/ generate any scary red warnings (and now my Downloads folder is full of EXEs), and I'm kinda sitting dazedly scratching my head a bit. Maybe all this requires some magic sauce I'm not aware of, or maybe it's just quietly bitrotted (doesn't seem to be the case?)... but the overwhelming lack of determinism is what makes trying to automate this next to impossible.

You just have to shove the website into a browser and screenshot the output. Because the chain between "load URL" and "user sees red" is that rickety, that there's no clean way to test it. D:

Re: Thanks HN: Lessons learned after Google nearly killed my site

#296

Post by sayhar »

at_a_remove wrote: post #225
fefe23 wrote: post #32

Can someone explain to my why Google isn't being drowned in a torrent of lawsuits? We are getting stories like this on a weekly basis now. Google is clearly causing measurable harm to your company and you. And apparently to thousands before you. Considering how much money patent trolls manage to extract from Big Tech with considerably weaker cases, how is it that everybody is treating Google like a fragile grandmothe…

That last line is unpleasantly wrong. The coffee was not merely "hotter than you anticipated" (although that's at least sort of right), it was near boiling: McDonald's required franchisees to hold coffee at 180–190 °F, much closer to actual boiling than what other establishments hold coffee at, which is typically twenty degrees below that in that area. She had third degree burns on six percent of her body, six rather…

Thank you! The whole "hurr durr McDonalds Coffee" thing is one of those stories that simply won't seem to die, no matter how often heroes like you show up and do the work of correcting it.
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