Sunday 15 February 2009

Phishing for greased monkeys

A couple of weeks ago, for approximately 40 minutes, Google's search results could be seen claiming that every site on the internet, including Google itself, 'may harm your computer'. Right now (about 23:30) it also appears to be accusing itself of phishing, but only when I'm using Firefox.

If I click on a link to Google's cached pages, or on 'View as HTML', no matter what the search is for, I get this:

Warning - phishing (web forgery) suspected

The site you are trying to visit has been identified as a forgery, intended to trick you into disclosing financial, personal or other sensitive information.

Suggestions:Or you can continue to http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:nInaxmec3voJ:www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/+google+may+harm+your+computer&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk at your own risk.

If you believe that this site is not actually a phishing site, you can report an incorrect warning.
Advisory provided byGoogle

However, on Internet Explorer or Chrome, no problems. As for the default IT solution of restarting, no joy there, either. Which leaves one last possibility (that I can think of): disable the Grease Monkey plug-in (not that it should be running any scripts for google.co.uk anyway).

RESULT: Google is no longer accusing itself of phishing. Whether it really was some kind of clash with the Grease Monkey plug-in, however, I have no idea, since re-enabling it hasn't caused the problem to return.

CONCLUSION: Another Google hiccup? Just one of those things? Probably the latter, I suspect - unless anyone else happened to see this? Answers in the usual place...

1 comment:

Louise said...

Hi Tim ~

All I know is that I just installed Norton 2009 and the Google caches immediately went nuts. They will only allow me to view cached pages on very large sites. For any small sites - even innocuous ones with no purchasing opportunities on their menus, like apiaries for example - Google claims the site is a phishing threat and won't allow me to view the cached pages. Could it be Norton or just Google?
Louise
4/19/09