New Message Center Notifications for Hacking and Abuse

[pageoneresults]

Starting this month, we will notify more webmasters of more potential issues we've detected on their websites, including: Spammy or abused user-generated content, Abused forum pages or egregious amounts of comment spam, Suspected hacking.

Is your site hacked? New Message Center notifications for hacking and abuse
[GoogleWebmasterCentral.blogspot.com...]

[tedster]

This is a good thing for the web. I also appreciate the screen captures to show us what these notices will look like when they roll out. Along with previous efforts - including "Fetch as Googlebot" - Google is clearly doing something helpful for webmasters here.

[TamanRoyal]

But it still can't solve other external problem, e.g.: somebody purposely leave comments on bad/pron sites on behalf of your site name.

[tedster]

No, clearly not - that's the webmaster's direct responsibility. But server hacking - and very devious parasite hosting - are now epidemic and many webmasters don't even know to watch out for it. So I see this as quite a helpful service.

[TamanRoyal]

Well, now I should check WMT more often.
It's almost a year since my last visit to WMT. Mostly, I visit analytics for the information kind of overlap with WMT

I remember back then, all my sites have been injected with bad script from .CN and it happened for weeks without notice. It's good if WMT or analytics can give somekind of warning.

[dstiles]

Be even better if they emailed you instead of expecting you to log in every few hours. :(

[tedster]

That feature exists as an option. You can set all Message Center notices to forward to your regular email address.

[dstiles]

Ah. Thanks. Missed that one. :(

[Bewenched]

Wow .. that will be helpful. It would be great if we could report that a particular link is not to be associated with us.

[Pass the Dutchie]

yes, defo a good idea. Would be great if they also mentioned any other flags.

[oddsod]

What Google doesn't tell you is that visitors using Firefox will get blocked from visiting your site. And the only way of getting Google to lift the restriction and the warning message presented to Firefox users is to succumb to the Gorg. You have to sign up to webmastertools, give the Gorg your email address, stick their meta tag on your site, request re-assessment and jump all their hoops if you want your regular visitors who use Firefox to continue returning to your site.

You can't visit your own site with Firefox till you've completed all the above steps.

[tedster]

A lot of that is completely new to me, oddsod - if I understand your post correctly. It sounds like you had quite a grueling experience.

[artek]

Thanks pageoneresults and tedster; just changed GWMTools email setting to "forward". It did not cross my mind to do it when I originally opened my GWMT accounts.

.... But server hacking - and very devious parasite hosting - are now epidemic and many webmasters don't even know to watch out for it.

Few years ago, in one day, during FTP upload I got about 5 or 6 malware kinds downloaded to my main computer. I did not pay much attention to it because ZoneA took care of them. Next day same thing happened.

When I called hosting support, they said that no one had complained about this particular shared hosting server. I had to talk to three different persons to make them do emergency scan of the whole server to remove malware that was probably infecting about hundred websites and no one was aware of it, myself including.

Definitely great idea, Google will benefit, webmasters will benefit, and it will help to keep malware under control at the sites hosted on shared servers.

What Google doesn't tell you is that visitors using Firefox will get blocked from visiting your site.

oddsod; Do you mean, after G finds malware on your site and you do not remove it?

[vordmeister]

MAKE SURE YOU INCLUDE THE WWW! (if you have one)

Sorry for the capitals, but I missed that one myself and it made google think I was only interested in the unpopular non-www version (the one with the 301 redirect) in webmaster tools. Register your site with the www if that's what you use.

I would assume the same goes for hacking notifications, so a heads up so newbies (like me) don't make the same mistake.

[oddsod]

A lot of that is completely new to me, oddsod - if I understand your post correctly. It sounds like you had quite a grueling experience.

There's a site I went to great trouble to keep out of the Gorg's clutches. They can't associate it with me even if they had access behind the WHOIS privacy.

But if a site like that ever gets hacked the entire Firefox using world is forever blocked from visiting that site. It doesn't matter if it was compromised for only a few minutes - they are still blocked. And if you want Firefox users to be able to access the site ever again you've got to agree to get assimilated. You've got to approach Google and give them your email address, stick their meta tag on your site, sign up to webmastertools etc! What on earth does it have to do with Google? Mozilla gave Google the right to decide whether people can visit me?! I can't reach my own site using FF!

Think you can setup a freemail address and fake identity to get the warning lifted? Sure. But then that fake email address is forever associated with that domain and you'll have to monitor it for messages. There is no way to close a Webmaster Tools account (that I've been able to find).

Since I discovered that (to me) major compromise of FF, I've stopped promoting Firefox as an alternative to IE.

[ken_b]

But if a site like that ever gets hacked the entire Firefox using world is forever blocked from visiting that site.

Isn't that a user prefs setting in FF?
Tools > Options > Security > Block Reported Attack Sites

[J_RaD]

What Google doesn't tell you is that visitors using Firefox will get blocked from visiting your site. And the only way of getting Google to lift the restriction and the warning message presented to Firefox users is to succumb to the Gorg. You have to sign up to webmastertools, give the Gorg your email address, stick their meta tag on your site, request re-assessment and jump all their hoops if you want your regular visitors who use Firefox to continue returning to your site.

You can't visit your own site with Firefox till you've completed all the above steps.

yep, one of my plain jane HTML sites got hit with googles nasty HARMFUL SITE reward once. nothing was changed and nothing was wrong but it made my site look big and scary and i had to jump thru hoops to get it all removed when nothing was even wrong in the 1st place!

[oddsod]

ken_b, but that doesn't solve the bigger problem...unless I can find some way of contacting all future visitors to the site and persuade them to turn off the default Firefox security setting.

i had to jump thru hoops to get it all removed when nothing was even wrong in the 1st place!

How long till you are considered guilty just because you are not signed up to WMT?

[explorador]

Great news so far on one side... "we can figure out a lot of things on your website" but still G does nothing against those copy pasters whose entire website has only copied content, not even the design.