The web can be a dangerous place; there are threats around every corner. In recent years, threats coming from web pages have significantly increased, from malicious programs hosted on web pages, to downloads that manipulate your computer and steal your personal information. In the past, these threats mainly came from questionable websites, but today even reputable sites can turn bad, which means that everyone is at risk for malware.
Live Search is proud to announce that starting today we are taking action against this plague. As Live Search crawls the web, we assess whether a page contains any malicious elements or exhibits any malicious behavior, and then flag questionable pages with a warning message (WARNING: following is a real example of an infected site!):
Our primary goal is to protect you from a potentially harmful page. You can still decide to risk it and visit the page, but we strongly urge against it and recommend always following our security guide Protect Your Computer.
If a reputable web page has been flagged, the website has most likely been abused by a malicious third party. On the Live Search Webmaster Center blog, we provide webmasters with information on how to fix and secure their websites from future abuse. We also encourage webmasters to sign up for our Webmaster Tools, which can alert them when malicious content on detected on their site.
Christian Seifert, Software Design Engineer, Live Search Anti-Spam & Anti-Malware Team
A NEW blog post referring to battling the PLAGUE, completely ignoring any of the previous problems using that have PLAGUED your OWN cashback program that has self destructed. No response to those that have cashback problems, and still no date on when the 40% will be reoffered as was promised.
Should I sell MSFT stock short??
Could Live Search crawl the web and find my 40% cashback please?
What the heck! Your sample site actually tried to install a Virus on to my machine! www.vistacove.net What are you trying to do here? Couldn't you have used a bogus site in your example????
"Could Live Search crawl the web and find my 40% cashback please?" +1
"Could Live Search crawl the web and find my 40% cashback please?" + 2
Why is the warning powered by JavaScript? If I click the link, that warning pops-up, but if I have JavaScript disabled, there is zero warning, that seems crazy.
Also, the warning that does pop-up isn't really that powerful, especially if there are ad links to the right, it could just be ignored by some people and the link clicked for a second time.
I think it is great that you have this feature of alerting people, but it's execution needs to be re-evaluated. I also think it isn't a good idea to have a web site that you believe is infected to appear as results number 1.
It shouldn't affect the ranking, since it is still relevant. The Javascript is definitely problematic though. Plus adding a link to the site on the popup definitely doesn't help protect users.
Maybe putting it against a light light red background with the warning under the site would be better.
I think it would just be easier to adopt McAfee Site Advisor into your search results.
Make friends with McAfee or buy the company. McAfee has a stellar site advisor.
@Quikboy: If I'm not mistaken, McAfee is owned by AOL. Buying it would be a problem, and raise antitrust complaints from the virus vendors (anti intentionally dropped; they are generally a plague), in addition to Microsoft will buy AOL fears.
A deal between the two would also make Microsoft look weak; until recently they had an antivirus program, and they do security analysis. If Microsoft isn't the foremost security expert, then it becomes okay to buy into antivirus claims, which generally are that "Windows is insecure" to cause FUD to get their product bought.
On a side note, this system uses a blacklist, which while being better then an antivirus programs blacklist (because the search results are also not the entire web; in theory Microsoft could scan every result, even if they can't get into password protected and other scenarios) is still a blacklist and thus fundamentally flawed. Sure, there is the layers of security bit, but I think this could cause some on the Internet to become too comfortable. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I'm thinking about it.
I am waiting for 20% cash back for my purchase on 11/26 from Circuitcity.com too. It showed 20% off when I was transfered to circuitcity.com from search.live.com. However, I only got 5% cash back showing up in my cashback account on 11/28. What a hell! I emailed MS cashback customer service several times but only got automatical response. No live person is handling this till now!!!!
I am telling my friends to be careful when using MS cashback because it is not reliable! Some fraud advertisements are floating around MS live search website and MS will not honor what it promised!
So will MS properly flag the Live Search cashback site itself as untrustworthy, a site to be avoided? Live Search tricked me into turning over my personal information with a false promise of cashback on a purchase that you have no intention of honoring.
Glad to hear this. :)
But it was about time! Google and Yahoo Search both introduced malware warnings within their search results in 2008.
Pingback : http://www.winvistaclub.com/
"Could Live Search crawl the web and find my 40% cashback please?" + probably thousands/millions
You should have written an article telling people to use linux, or Firefox instead of IE, that would help reduce the threat of visiting a lot of pages.
Yours is the malware that needs to be destroyed! Why does Microsoft shove Live Search down people's throats? I have tried everything to get away from it, but it just keeps popping up, when I try to use the internet. Upon searching the problem on the net, I saw where many other people are complaining of the same thing. Many have tried, but cannot permanently keep Live Search from popping up. What you are doing is wrong, and there should be legal sanctions to prevent it.
Great improvement, Christian! Users should always be aware that cybercriminals are taking advantage of web services. Many people will be protected with these warnings.
