The Dark Side Of The Internet: A Search Engine That Finds Unsecured Routers, Servers & A Whole Lot More

Apr 9, 2013 at 11:55am ET by Amy Gesenhues

Developed by John Matherly, Shodan is a search engine designed to help users find certain pieces of software, determine which applications are most popular, identify anonymous FTP servers, or investigate new vulnerabilities and what hosts they could infect. It also serves as a window into millions of unsecured online connections. According to an article on CNN Money, Shodan runs nonstop, collecting data from approximately 500 million connected devices and services each month. Through a simple search on Shodan, a user can identify a number of systems that either have no security measures in [...]

What Do Pamela Anderson, New Pornographers, & Women Rapping Have In Common? Google Blacklist Knows

Sep 29, 2010 at 12:56am ET by Matt McGee

Pamela Anderson is a well-known actress. The New Pornographers are an indie rock band. Women rapping are ... well, presumably just females making music. All three are also part of a growing list of known "naughty" phrases that trip up Google Instant. Danny Sullivan has already written about this topic here on Search Engine Land (see The Five Words You Can Never Suggest On Google Instant), but the folks at 2600 -- a hacker community magazine -- are compiling a Google Blacklist of words that Google Instant filters. The list, which is not safe for work and perhaps not safe for other rea [...]

The Five Words You Can Never Suggest On Google Instant

Sep 13, 2010 at 8:30am ET by Danny Sullivan

Like it or not, lots of people search for nude celebrities on Google. But with Google’s new Google Instant Search, those inclined to seek celebs in the buff have to figure out their queries without any help from Google. The same is true for those interested in nude beaches, famous nude artwork or "innocent" topics such as the Naked Brothers Band and nude lipstick. Below, a closer look at pros and cons to Google Instant's filtering, including a nod's to George Carlin's famous "Seven Words You Can Never Say In Television" bit. A Good Reason To Filter Adult Terms As we've covered, Goo [...]

How To Avoid Getting Your Search Rankings Trashed By Malware

Sep 4, 2009 at 5:25pm ET by Jonathan Hochman

As if SEOs don’t have enough things to worry about already, add malware to the list. Why does malware matter to SEOs? If the site you are working on gets infected, its search traffic will plummet. Search engines attempt to remove infected pages from their search results, or they label them with an ominous warning, such as This site may damage your computer. Back in 2008 Google reported that malware infected pages had increased to more than 1% of all search results. Google posted a malware statistics update last week. Malware infections have more than doubled since April 2009. Search res [...]

YouTube To Become More Kid Friendly?

Apr 20, 2009 at 9:30am ET by Barry Schwartz

Ars Technica reports Google has informed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that they have been working on a new filtering system for videos, comments and communication on YouTube. It is believed that Google is working on these changes in order to make YouTube more kid or family friendly, by complying more with the FCC regulations for TV viewing. Google wrote to the FCC: Google Inc. ("Google"), by its attorneys, files these comments in response to the Notice of Inquiry ("NOI") issued by the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC" or "Commission") initiating a proceeding as requi [...]

Ask.com & Symantec Partner To Detect Malicious Sites

Feb 3, 2009 at 12:01am ET by Chris Sherman

Ask.com has partnered with Symantec to include a new "Safe Search" feature into the Norton 360 security suite, integrated into the Norton toolbar that is part of the suite. When a search is run from the toolbar, results are safety-rated by Symantec using a color-coded icon, to flag sites or sections of sites that may be malicious or harmful. Mousing over a rating will open a popup window offering more details about the Safe Search rating. The toolbar works on both Internet Explorer and Firefox, and is set by default to not display "red" or potentially malicious web site in search results. [...]

Has Microsoft Live Search Detected Malware On Your Site?

Dec 4, 2008 at 12:59pm ET by Vanessa Fox

Recently, Microsoft Live Search added malware warnings to their search results. If a searcher clicks a result that Microsoft has detected contains malware, a popup warns then not to proceed to the site. As Matt noted yesterday, Google and Yahoo! also provide malware warnings to searchers. How can you find out if Microsoft has flagged your site for malware and how can you let them know you've fixed the problem? As part of this update, Microsoft Live Search also launched an update to their Webmaster Center that added alerts about malware. You can generate a report of all pages on your site t [...]

Live Search Adds Malware Warnings To Search Results

Dec 3, 2008 at 1:25am ET by Matt McGee

MSN's Live Search has announced the addition of malware warnings to their search results pages. In doing so, Live Search joins Google and Yahoo in taking a proactive stance against potentially dangerous sites; Google began adding malware warnings in early 2007. Yahoo added SearchScan alerts in May of this year. The Live Search implementation is different from how the other two search engines show malware warnings. When a potentially harmful page shows up in the Live Search results, users see no warning until they actually try to click on the link. When they do click, a small "pop-up" bo [...]

Yahoo Labels Google As Malware? No, Yahoo URL Mix Up

May 12, 2008 at 8:20am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google Is A Malware Site (Says Yahoo) from TechCrunch reports a funny bug at Yahoo that accidentally made it look like Google's home page had Malware on it, based on the Yahoo SearchScan feature that was recently launched. A search for Astalavista at Yahoo returned what appeared to be a Google.com result in the 10th position. But in reality, Yahoo somehow mixed up the astalavista.ms URL with a Google.com URL, and since astalavista.ms had signs of Malware on it, it appeared that Google.com had malware on it. Here is a screen capture of what the search results originally looked like, when Ya [...]

Yahoo Adds SearchScan Alerts To “Risky” Search Results

May 6, 2008 at 12:00am ET by Vanessa Fox

Yahoo Search has begun a partnership with McAfee, Inc. to provide SearchScan, which uses McAfee's SiteAdvisor technology to flag URLs it deems "risky" in the search results. Results are flagged with the type of danger below the title. This new feature is primarily aimed at preventing spyware and other malicious software from being downloaded on searchers' computers, as well as at preventing searchers from falling victim to sites that employ spammy email tactics. The Yahoo Search Blog provides more information. Below, more details on what types of pages are flagged and how site ow [...]

Google Adds Report Malicious Software Form

Nov 30, 2007 at 9:20am ET by Barry Schwartz

In the aftermath of the major malware attack that hit search results, the Google Online Security Blog announced the launch of a new form to report malware software showing up in Google results. Google Cleans Up Returns; Yahoo Not So Much from eWeek has a look at how Google has quickly cleaned up the malware from their search results, while Yahoo has taken a slower approach. [...]

Malware Hits Search Results — Google’s Malware Warnings Not Working?

Nov 28, 2007 at 8:57am ET by Barry Schwartz

Subverted search sites lead to massive malware attack in progress from ComputerWorld reports that Google, along with Yahoo, Live Search have been targeted in a massive attack that puts links leading to malware sites into top search results. Alex Eckelberry, Sunbelt Software's CEO said "So far we've found 27 different domains, each with up to 1,499 [malicious] pages. That's 40,000 possible pages." The pages are specifically being returned by search engines in their organic results (not the paid results). Eckelberry explains, "They get themselves on to Google, then redirect people to their [...]

Searching For An Adult Topic? You’ll Have To Prove Your Age To Google Korea

May 17, 2007 at 10:13am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google Korea to censor search results from InfoWorld reports that Google Korea -- like other search engines in the country -- will require people to prove their age in order to get back unfiltered results for certain searches. Those searching for any of about 700 terms judged to be adult in nature by the Korean government will be required to enter their name and national resident registration number. If they are under 19, results will be filtered. Google Korea hopes to go live with this new feature by September 1, 2007. Postscript: We sent the following questions to Google and received the [...]

Google Takes Action To ‘Strip’ Confidential Information From Google Blacklist

Jan 23, 2007 at 9:15am ET by Barry Schwartz

Vnunet reports that Google has admitted to the leak of passwords via the Google Blacklist. But Google has also issued a statement saying that they "procedures have been put in place to strip login information from future submissions." As I noted yesterday, this is not the first time confidential information has been found in Google's phishing blacklist, but hopefully, this will be the last time. [...]

Google’s Blacklist Of Phishing Sites Contained Bank Information & More Confidential Details

Jan 22, 2007 at 9:08am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google Blacklist Contained Confidential Information at Techcrunch reports that Google's phishing blacklist, which is publicly available for anyone to see, had confidential information enclosed. Such information included "usernames and passwords of individuals, including credentials for accounts at banks and other financial institutions." Google has quietly removed the information that may put users at risk, but it just shows us that this can happen. Danny discussed the other week, his experience with the Google & Firefox 2 Anti-Phishing Warning when he went to his bank online. The Google [...]

Google & Firefox 2 Anti-Phishing Warning In Action

Jan 20, 2007 at 3:26pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Last month, I covered a number of ways that browsers and search engines are working together to protect surfers from phishing sites. These are sites pretending to be run by someone else, such as bank, in hopes of catching your personal log-in information. This week while doing my banking, I got to see a phishing warning actually happen through the Google - Firefox 2 partnership. It was also an incorrect warning, which made the experience even more interesting. Below, a look at what happened when I visited Citibank. I went to the CitiCards site, which I've long used. I typed in the URL, r [...]

AOL Has “Safest” Results & Free Results Safer Than Paid

Dec 12, 2006 at 10:09am ET by Danny Sullivan

A new survey from McAfee finds that AOL has the "safest" search results in terms of not listing sites that might be somehow be risky or unsafe for searchers. But most interesting to me was the fact paid results across the board were found far riskier than free, organic results. Let's do the numbers, some summary plus tools that will help protect you and how to see if Google thinks you've been naughty. In terms of unsafe results, most of the major search engines are pretty clean. McAfee ran 2,500 queries, looked to five pages deep, then assessed the "safety" of the sites [...]

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