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Thanks HN: Lessons learned after Google nearly killed my site

uploader.win

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

#3

Post by hertzrat »

I made a Wordpress site last year to start blogging that had this happen. The only reason I found out in this case was from visiting it in edge, which showed a warning pop up, so maybe it was a Microsoft flag instead of google in this case. I never figured out the cause or a way to remedy it and just took the site offline because it was invisible to all search engines. Pretty disappointing

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

#5

Post by duckfang »

To be quite honest, this seems like a case of Libel and possibly Tortious Interference on behalf of Google/Alphabet.

Especially if you can show damages/customers cancelling service, I think this would be a hill to die on. Google et al have too much power, even over people and orgs that aren't even customers. Its high time we reign their powers in, find them strongly culpable for what they do (and what they change and then refuse to do), and consider breaking up these monster companies up when they show they are against the public interest.

Were you, uploaderwin, given a notice prior (say to abuse@uploader.win , admin@uploader.win or other appropriate mails) to being effectively banned WRT google? I'd go on a limb and say you didnt. No, you have to be aware of the right page at Google, register you as an admin to the site, and hope they share what they consider abuse.

And frankly, you were lucky you got the social media escalation. You should have never had this happen... But here we are.

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

#8

Post by vntok »

From the article:

> So after a lot of brainstorming and ideas from HNers I finally figured out the culprit(s).

> We have a live demo on our home where people can upload a test file. [...]

> We also give all users a 20MB test storage. [...]

> I believe that somebody signed up for our service (it’s free to sign up) and then uploaded a malicious file on our test storage and abused this feature.

If that is correct, Google was completely in the right to flag the domain as malicious and warn visitors.

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

#9

Post by kemayo »

duckfang wrote: post #5

To be quite honest, this seems like a case of Libel and possibly Tortious Interference on behalf of Google/Alphabet. Especially if you can show damages/customers cancelling service, I think this would be a hill to die on. Google et al have too much power, even over people and orgs that aren't even customers. Its high time we reign their powers in, find them strongly culpable for what they do (and what they change and…

Based on what the article says, it sounds like the Google auto-blocking was correct.

The website owner's theory is that someone used their demo to upload a genuinely malicious file, and presumably then shared it to others. Adding the site to their blocklist immediately is a reasonable action taken in defense of Google's users. It's certainly not libel for them to truthfully say the website is hosting malicious content. Well, not in the US; other jurisdictions don't necessarily have truth as a defense. (Tortious interference is complicated, but typically requires that the person interfering knows about the business relationship they're obstructing, and is taking the action for the purpose of obstructing it. It seems like a stretch here.)

As always with Google, the real issue here is their awful communication and slow responses to people who can't find a way to go outside the normal channels.

EDIT: and the article has some useful suggestions for practices to follow if you need to let people upload files as a demo. I hadn't really considered the purpose of a separate domain for such things from this angle before.

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

#10

Post by random5634 »

Quick notes:

Site owner has not confirmed they screened all uploaded content for malware - this is a major issue these days and google and others will flag you if you host viruses and pump out malware.

And no - you cannot sue google to force them to allow users to be infected.

It’s not clear that all customer content is hosted on a separate domain, and each customer on a separate sub domain . Your reputation will be trashed pretty quickly if you host content on main domain blindly.

It’s not clear that all uploaded content is protected from being linked too or downloaded. Google admins and other virus vendors can setup screens on downloads.

Anyways - see plenty of shady / scam and incompetent website owners hosting malware - not much sympathy in most cases.

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