Google Police (Vigilante?)

I've just seen a google Malware warning (Screenshot)for the first time - not really sure when they started this.

This strikes me as potentially a very dangerous thing for Google to be doing, here are my initial thoughts:

Very strong warning

• It's a strongly worded warning - most people will heed it.
• You must manually cut and paste the link. This will dramatically reduce access to the pages

This is good if they are correct and very very bad if they get it wrong.

How wide is the net?

The site I was trying to visit was a forum on hostprogressive.com which was formerly f2o.org which hosted free sites - there was nothing particalularly nasty on the page I visited, or on the main site. Was it a particular sub domain or page that was the issue?

I tried to investigate via Report Search on StopBadware.org but couldn't find any mention of hostprogressive and why they might be blacklisted.

Give with one hand and take with the other

Another point was that while Google gave a very strong warning not to go to the page - they were happy to have a Google Adwords on the page.

What if they get it wrong

If Google get it wrong then they are essentially slandering the site by saying that it is hosting bad software. There was no clear remediation path for site owners.

This could have implications for ISP's who give free hosting and it gets abused and their entire domain gets blacklisted.

Conclusion

I think this may help some people and prevent some people getting spyware on their computers, however, it will also cause a lot of pain for many sites if the checking process by stop badware and google is not stringent enough.

Let me know your thoughts or comments.