Adware Report: Official Response from StopBadware

It looks like we're finally getting somewhere. Here's the official response from StopBadware. We will reply in a follow-up post.

Hi everyone,

I work for StopBadware, and I'd like to help clear up some confusion in the Adware Report article and in the comments here about StopBadware's role in Google's malware warning system.

We're the first to admit that the warning system is not perfect. We do believe it's the best option we have right now to protect internet users from being victimized by badware. Our goal is to protect internet users from harmful software, not to "punish" site owners who have been victims of hacking. Both StopBadware and Google are working on making changes to the system, but not all changes are as simple to implement as they are to suggest. We are balancing time coding and implementing changes with time spent responding to individual webmasters that have cleaned and secured their sites and want their warnings removed.

To clear up some major misunderstandings in the original article and in this thread, I'd like to point to our FAQ about the Google warnings, and about StopBadware's role in helping websites clean up and get off the warning list. The FAQ is available here:
http://stopbadware.org/home/faq#partnerwarnings

As the FAQ notes, Google, not StopBadware, finds sites hosting or distributing badware and independently places the warning page in search results for the sites in question. Google sends that information to us, and we make it available through our Badware Website Clearinghouse (http://stopbadware.org/home/clearinghouse). As is noted on the Clearinghouse page for Adware Reports (http://stopbadware.org/reports/container?reportname=www.adwarereport.com%2Fmt%2Farchives), StopBadware had not yet independently reviewed that site.

Where Stopbadware comes in as an active player in the badware warnings process is when someone, usually a site owner or webmaster, requests that we review a site that has been flagged by Google. They can submit a Request for Review through our web form (http://www.stopbadware.org/home/review). The Request for Review form notes that requests can be processed more quickly if a site owner first locates the badware on their site, cleans it up, and - if the badware was hacked onto their site - also finds and fixes any security vulnerabilities that allowed their site to be victimized in the first place. Once a request for review has been submitted, we address each request as quickly as possible. If our testing finds a site to indeed be clean, we let Google know, and Google also tests to confirm that the site is clean. In our experience, when Google confirms a site is clean, they generally remove the warning page quite quickly, and we correspondingly remove the site from our Clearinghouse.

So, why is StopBadware involved in the Google warnings at all? We're an independent, nonprofit body associated with two major research universities (Harvard and Oxford), and as such we are well placed to serve as an impartial third party.

Another issue that comes up in questions to us is notifying webmasters about the Google warnings. We're talking with Google about ways to notify people that their site has been flagged, but it's actually more complicated than it initially would seem. There is no standard email contact for site owners, and there is a danger that guessing on an email address could end up notifying the wrong party. If that wrong party is a hosting service, there's a possibility that the website could be shut down entirely if the hosting service so chooses. Hosting services frequently take just that route when they receive complaints about content that might infringe intellectual property, for example. We feel that accidentally notifying a hosting provider instead of a site owner would be much worse for webmasters than the warning page, which does not actually take down or block a site. Google does offer alerts about warnings to webmasters signed up through its Webmaster Tools service. You can read more in this blog post on Google's webmaster central blog: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/01/about-badware-warnings.html.

With regard to the specific case of Adware Report, the Google warning (and corresponding listing in our Clearinghouse) is for http://www.adwarereport.com/mt/archives, not for the full site. While the instance of badware that initially caused the site to be flagged has been removed, other instances of badware were still on the site as recently as yesterday, based on testing performed by Google. While testing by both StopBadware and Google has shown the site to be clean today, and we have informed the site owner of that finding, the owner may need to take steps to ensure that the website will be secure against hacking in the future in order to prevent repeat infections. We have some pointers for cleaning and securing websites here: http://stopbadware.org/home/security.

I'm happy to discuss concerns with any digg readers, either here, on our discussion list, or one-on-one over email. The discussion list is at http://groups.google.com/group/stopbadware, and my email is egeorge AT cyber DOT law DOT harvard DOT edu.

thanks,
Erica

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