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Google Safe Browsing incident

statichost.eu

71–80 of 183 posts

Re: Google Safe Browsing incident

#71
post #7

Hosts phishing sites, gets blocked by anti phishing mechanism. Works as expected from my point of view. Get yourself on public suffix list or get better moderation. But of course just moaning about bad google is easier.

If youtube.com doesn't end up on the Safe Browsing blacklist because of phishing videos, but your own website can easily end up there, it's a pretty clear case of Google abusing their power.

Re: Google Safe Browsing incident

#72
As a CISO I am happy with many of the protections that Google creates. They are in a unique position, and probably the only ones to be able to do it.

However, I think the issue is that with great power comes great responsibility.

They are better than most organisations, and working with many constraints that we cannot always imagine.

But several times a week we get a false "this mail is phishing" incident, where a mail from a customer or prospect is put in "Spam", with a red security banner saying it contains "dangerous links". Generally it is caused by domain reputation issues, that block all mail that uses an e-mail scanning product. These products wrap URLs so they can scan when the mail is read, and thus when they do not detect a virus, they become defacto purveyors of virii, and their entire domain is tagged as dangerous.

I have raised this to Google in May (!) and have been exchanging mail on a nearly daily basis. Pointing out a new security product that has been blacklisted, explaining the situation to a new agent, etc.

Not only does this mean that they are training our staff that security warnings are generally false, but it means we are missing important mail from prospects and customers. Our customers are generally huge corporations, missing a mail for us is not like missing one mail for a B2C outfit.

So far the issue is not resolved (we are in Oct now!) and recently they have stopped responding. I appreciate our organisation is not the US Government, but still, we pay upwards of 20K$ / year for "Google Workspace Enterprise" accounts. I guess I was expecting something more.

If someone within Google reads this: you need to fix this.

Re: Google Safe Browsing incident

#73
post #35

Honestly, this is extremely basic stuff in hosting, not only due to safe browsing, but also—and more importantly—cookie safety, etc. If a hosting provider didn’t know (already bad enough) and turn to whining after being hit, then > Static site hosting you can trust is more like amateur hour static site hosting you can’t trust. Sorry.

The thing is, you cannot just add any domain to the PSL. You need a significant amount of users before they will include your domain. Before recently, there really was no point in even submitting, since the domain would have been rejected as too small. An increase in user base, increase in malicious content and the ability to add your domain to the PSL all happen sort of simultaneously.

I'm also trusting my users to not expose their cookies for the whole *.statichost.eu domain. And all "production" sites use a custom domain anyway, which avoids all of this anyway.

Re: Google Safe Browsing incident

#74
post #61
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you're responding to him, so questions or suggestions are probably better than speculation. My comment about vitriol was more directed at the HN commenters than Eric himself. Really, I think a discussion about web infrastructure is more interesting than a hatefest on Google. Thankfully, the balance seems to have shifted since I posted my top-level comment.

> Well, you're responding to him, so questions or suggestions are probably better than speculation. I suspect the author is unaware of their other blindspots. It's not 2001 anymore. Holding yourself out as a hosting provider comes with some baseline expectations.

[deleted]

Re: Google Safe Browsing incident

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Google does good thing, therefore Google has too much power over the internet" is not a convincing point to make. This safety feature saves a nontrivial number of people from life-changing mistakes. Yes we publishers have to take extra care. Hard to see a negative here.

I respectfully disagree with your premise. In this specific case, yes, "Google does good thing" in a sense. That is not why I'm saying Google has too much power. "Too much" is relative and whether they do good or bad debatable, of course, but it's hard to argue that they don't have a gigantic influence on the whole internet, no? :) Helping people avoid potentially devastating mistakes is of course a good thing.

You're not wrong. You just picked a poor example which illustrates the opposite of the point you're making.

Re: Google Safe Browsing incident

#76
I am a solo developer. I recently created a new web app for a client. Google has marked as phishing so they can't use it. Obviously I can't do anything about it except report error and wait. I'm worried if I move it to a new domain that one will get marked as well. Not sure what to do TBH.

Re: Google Safe Browsing incident

#77
post #76

I am a solo developer. I recently created a new web app for a client. Google has marked as phishing so they can't use it. Obviously I can't do anything about it except report error and wait. I'm worried if I move it to a new domain that one will get marked as well. Not sure what to do TBH.

Is it phishing?

Re: Google Safe Browsing incident

#78
I’ve got a random subdomain hosting a little internal tool. About twice a year, Google Safe Browsing decides it’s phishing and flags it. Sometimes they flag the whole domain for good measure.

Search Console always points to my internal login page, which isn’t public and definitely isn’t phishing.

They clear it quickly when I appeal, and since it’s just for me, I’ve mostly stopped worrying about it.

Re: Google Safe Browsing incident

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Google does good thing, therefore Google has too much power over the internet" is not a convincing point to make. This safety feature saves a nontrivial number of people from life-changing mistakes. Yes we publishers have to take extra care. Hard to see a negative here.

I respectfully disagree with your premise. In this specific case, yes, "Google does good thing" in a sense. That is not why I'm saying Google has too much power. "Too much" is relative and whether they do good or bad debatable, of course, but it's hard to argue that they don't have a gigantic influence on the whole internet, no? :) Helping people avoid potentially devastating mistakes is of course a good thing.

What point are you trying to make here? You hosted phishing sites on your primary domain, which was then flagged as unsafe. You chose not to use the tools that would have marked those sites as belonging to individual users, and the system worked as designed.

Re: Google Safe Browsing incident

#80
post #76

I am a solo developer. I recently created a new web app for a client. Google has marked as phishing so they can't use it. Obviously I can't do anything about it except report error and wait. I'm worried if I move it to a new domain that one will get marked as well. Not sure what to do TBH.

Is it phishing?

No, however it does include a Microsoft entra/Azure AD/Microsoft 365 login for that clients tenant. It is also a newly registered domain so I can understand why it looks suspicious. The most frustrating thing is that this is all a machine I.e. no-one I can speak to, nothing I can do to fix it. My fate has been decided by an algorithm.
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