A letter from the Editor to all our readers

Well, that was an interesting week.. It’s taken a concentrated effort but yes we are back up and running again as normal. If you read the article from a week ago, you will already know that the barganews servers were hacked at the start of this month allowing a small line of code to be inserted into many of its pages which opened up in a pop-up window and if clicked tried to spam the viewer with unwanted websites. This was a known exploit of the software that is running on the servers producing barganews and upgrading to the latest version has now removed this problem.

It has taken far longer than expected to go through the site with a “digital fine tooth comb” making sure that all of this unwanted code has found and destroyed but now we are secured and ready for action once again …. except for one small thing ….

….. Google.

Google identified the site as one that might be hosting or distributing malicious software. And so removed all clickable links to barganews and instead sent people to a page warning them that the site may harm their computer.

This identification is based in part on guidelines set by stopbadware.org however, Google uses its own criteria and procedures and tools to identify “dangerous” sites. They do say on their website that sometimes third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which causes them to show the warning message.

If you feel your site has been mistakenly identified or if you make changes to your site so that it no longer hosts or distributes malicious software and you secure your site so that it is no longer vulnerable to the insertion of badware you can request that your site be reviewed.

Yesterday, the request was sent up to Google. Now it’s just a question of time, waiting to see how long it does actually take them to remove the warning message.

This article started with the phrase “well, that was an interesting week” with a good deal of irony, buried in that word “interesting” - it actually has been a very stressful week watching the site coming to a grinding halt - with morale dipping at the start of this week into the - oh no. I can’t keep up with this - it’s time to throw in the towel and call it a day – mindset but luckily that has now passed and things are looking brighter (slightly)

What has been interesting is the discovery that so many people now use Google at the start of their browsing experience. I have had many e-mails, telephone calls and people stopping me in the Piazza, informing me that they could no longer get on to barganews. I heard over and over again the same phrase ” I can’t get on to barganews, it is blocked”

I too started to get paranoid and wondered if the search engine was actually blocking the servers IP address but no that’s not what was happening.

Instead Google was simply blocking the clickable links on to barganews from their site. All people had to do was put in the address of barganews into their browser and the site was running perfectly but so many people have got so used to using Google as the starting mechanism for Internet that they seem to have forgotten about typing in addresses.

Has Google become the cultural gatekeeper for all things internet ? I hope they do keep firmly in mind their founding phrase “do no evil”

P.S It must be that time of year …. this week 5 years ago we had almost the same kind of problems

By the way, thanks for some of the encouraging comments in the forum and Towler’s link to a terrible blogging stress story might make you smile.

Related Articles

• Google thinks that barganews may harm your computer
  Many of you have already noticed that barganews has been a little quiet all this week. Added to ...April 4, 2008


• barganews recommends Firefox2
  It is not very often that we here on barganews recommend software (in fact the last time was over ...November 29, 2007


• Instructional videos on barganews
  There have been a number of changes here on the barganews site recently .. some of them forced ...May 12, 2008


• Award winning Daily Images
  As we gradually put back up on line barganews after the move from the American servers to European ...January 22, 2007


• Closed and open doors in Barga
  And so all of the seasonal festivities are over in Barga - Christmas, New Year and the Befana. It ...January 29, 2008

3 Responses to “A letter from the Editor to all our readers”

Comments

1. Jess Apr 10 2008 / 2am

   Wow…..

   Thanks for diving in after Barganews, fishing it out, and dragging yourself and the website back up on the beach!

   Google….. wow, it is amazing how people learn a trick and then never go back, I remember a few years ago it was AOL, everyone used to need AOL to get to the internet, and then they needed AOL for e-mail, and then they just kept paying money every month to continue to use AOL long after it was offering them anything they actually needed. I am the same I suppose, but it is amazing how it happens to all of us. Anyway, I have Barganews as my home page so Barganews is my gateway to the internet. That I suppose is a little scary as well!!

   Thanks DB for working so hard for all of us,

   Jess
2. doggybag Apr 10 2008 / 2pm

   What is slightly worrying Jess is that this is the second time this month that things have had to be altered on the site due to another third-party.

   The front page of barganews was integrated into the Facebook system - the social networking website that is attempting to change the browsing habits of the digital world. Unfortunately, I had to remove all of the references and links to Facebook after I had a few complaints from regular readers, who could no longer access barganews at work.

   It seems their systems administrators blocked access to their computers to any sites showing links to Facebook. Now you can argue that if they were on the work computers then you should be working and not looking at barganews but it is a worrying trend don’t you think?

   The fact that Google blocks links to sites that they think might harm your computer is actually very positive but what is not so funny is the amount of time it is taking to get that block removed - maybe it now needs a human hand and not a computer to unblock ? Watch this space
3. Antonio Apr 10 2008 / 5pm

   Hi there,
   Unfortunately barganews.com is pointing to an IP number that has been recorded by a spam-trap database (spamcannibal.org). Unless you request a complete delisting from that database, Google and other providers (such as mail servers) will carry on considering this website a danger for users’ activities.

   I understand this can be very annoying, time and money wasting however these kind of services and databases block a stunning 70% of the real spammers (web and mail) .
   It would be a lot easier if they could delist an IP once its problem has been solved, but we’re asking too much…

Leave a Reply