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Google removes thousands of malware sites

downloadsquad.com — Google has cleansed more than 40,000 of malware hosting sites from their index, that seemed to be part of an organized SEO attack. OK - you might be thinking, spam search results show up everyday - why is this a big deal? It's a big deal because the techniques used for these attacks was more clever and thought out than the typical SEO-poisoning.

Who dugg this? Made popular Nov 30, 2007

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  • Dokument, on 11/30/2007, -4/+119and thats why i bow 5 times a day in the direction of the nearest google server farm.
  • 4Paws, on 11/30/2007, -9/+77I'm sexually attracted to Google.
  • blackomegax, on 11/30/2007, -3/+68norton is malware too.
  • gothsquirrel, on 11/30/2007, -1/+44Sweet, only millions more to be removed.
  • RoyalPwner, on 11/30/2007, -3/+40Googletheism.
  • inactive, on 11/30/2007, -2/+32Back to the Apple section of where you crawled, fanboy!
  • KingBunny, on 11/30/2007, -3/+33Google cleanses things with fire.
  • Bamborzled, on 11/30/2007, -2/+25Remember, depictions of the prophet Larry Page are strictly forbidden.
  • Bamborzled, on 11/30/2007, -4/+25The original source, not some blog:
    http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com ...
  • inactive, on 11/30/2007, -1/+22Good fer you. Have a cookie.
  • ShatteredBlade, on 11/30/2007, -2/+21Windows Defender is better than Norton.

    And that's saying a lot.
  • inactive, on 11/30/2007, -1/+17A little selfish, eh? Just because you think you don't get viruses doesn't mean you should bury it. This can be important to others.
  • Damian91, on 11/30/2007, -2/+18Oh God don't tell me you're one of dem websexuals. /me gets shotgun
  • ShatteredBlade, on 11/30/2007, -1/+17Wow, ***** much? I'm going to laugh when your computer does get ***** over.
  • ferrariman60, on 11/30/2007, -2/+17Yeah, it's fine now. Just wait until you need to uninstall it when next years version comes out- then you'll know that, in fact, Norton is indeed malware. It's actually easier to get rid of malware than to uninstall norton!
  • lex0nyc, on 11/30/2007, -1/+16Buried for bad sportsmanship.
  • ThreeDee912, on 11/30/2007, -3/+17Thank Science!
  • ThugEsquire, on 11/30/2007, -1/+14Now if only they would remove the Experts-Exchange links...
  • Resolution, on 11/30/2007, -0/+13I don't consider Norton malware, but I do believe that it is a HUGE contributor to the spread of malware. Think about it. Norton comes pre-installed (in mass) on these pre-built computer systems. After a certain time, the software stops downloading updates until you pay for a subscription. From my personal experience, most people don't update their subscriptions on these systems, thus becoming infected sooner or later. Personally, I believe virus definition updates should be free and you should only have to pay for updates to the application itself.
  • inactive, on 11/30/2007, -9/+18Norton isn't the best anti-virus tool out there, but let's not start bashing it. It's better than nothing.
  • crapmatic, on 11/30/2007, -4/+13And with one stroke Microsoft vanishes from the Google listings.
  • mmmiiikkkeee, on 11/30/2007, -4/+12what if some one else buys the domain that these "bad" sites are hosted on... do they never show up on google..... google needs to be careful here!!! in the future this could be a problem
  • inactive, on 11/30/2007, -1/+9I dont have an iPhone. I just buried the latest iPhone story.
  • zaii7, on 11/30/2007, -0/+8your 1 in a million...norton is the equivalent of herpes ..you may think its gone...but suddenly prom night hits and...BAM!
  • thailand1972, on 11/30/2007, -0/+8I see them on airplanes now
  • inactive, on 11/30/2007, -0/+7go google yourself
  • bjornski, on 11/30/2007, -1/+8You haven't been paying attention to the "Apple ***** up latest update" thread.
  • asdfuku, on 11/30/2007, -1/+7I had to stop reading at "blogosphere." It was a good article before that though... (and I'm praying they were not using that term seriously)
  • Berkana, on 11/30/2007, -1/+7Ah. I see. Google has declared Jihad on spam. ^_~

    (A stack of servers may look like a black cube, but I think that's taking it a bit far.)
  • Kamill85, on 11/30/2007, -0/+6Hello Mac user, http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001312.h ...
  • lex0nyc, on 11/30/2007, -0/+6Googles?
  • fmorel90, on 11/30/2007, -0/+5Every site removed is one less chance to be infected.
  • schoate09, on 11/30/2007, -1/+6No, it is worse than nothing.
    1 Infection> 0 Infections
  • inactive, on 11/30/2007, -2/+7He's joking you idiots.
  • thailand1972, on 11/30/2007, -1/+5Googosexual?
  • svivian, on 11/30/2007, -0/+4Only for those using lame-ass IE.
  • arcangelgabriel, on 11/30/2007, -0/+4If he'd of typed Micro$oft, I would have found him, and I would have hurt him.
  • SpicyViper, on 11/30/2007, -0/+4if you visit a malware site, you're visiting every malware site the first site has ever been with...
  • film_girl, on 11/30/2007, -0/+3Yeah, I wasn't - unfortunately that colloquial term is the easiest to refer to the never-ending circle-jerk that seems to exist in certain blog-circles (especially those that promote SEO)
  • digmark, on 11/30/2007, -0/+3Buried for absolute inaccuracy of article. Idiot.
  • darkecho, on 11/30/2007, -1/+4as a professional internet user and web developer, I "detected" this trend a long time ago. its easy to tell when you hit a ***** load of sites with your keyword and they show nothing but adsense related to that keyword.
  • gndoss, on 11/30/2007, -3/+5Let's see. Better font size, less obtrusive ads, less useless clutter (though still a good amount), no annoying jump, and better writing. I'll take the blog, thanks.
  • Raerth, on 11/30/2007, -7/+9Buried as inaccurate, microsoft still shows up.
  • spinchange, on 11/30/2007, -2/+4It's not over:
    Shortly after Sunbelt reported that Google nuked these sites, they issued another update that even MORE sites still were making it into their (Google's) directory. That doesn't seem to be clearly mentioned here, though it is on Sunbelt's blog.
    http://digg.com/security/Google_SEO_poisoning_The_ ...
  • DefaultGen, on 11/30/2007, -0/+2So what are the chances that for each of the owners of those 40,000 sites... it was the only one they owned?
  • sentersoftech, on 03/02/2009, -0/+1been a pleasure to read... I agree with all of the aboves.
  • gerryk, on 11/30/2007, -0/+1Weeks? With all due respect, automated keyword based search pages have been around for years. Before Overture was purchased by Google a large percentage of their results were arrived at like this.
  • quikboy, on 12/01/2007, -0/+1This isn't THAT impressive.

    I bet many search engines remove malware sites, or any of those bad sites off it's index.

    Y!, Live, and Ask.com probably do the same as well. Maybe Google's # is large, but these things are done regularly on every web search engine.

    I'm quite sure I've used the report a spam link on a few other search engines other than Google, and obviously they're doing something about it as well.

    Google's feat is not that impressive.
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