Google stops all the traffic

Stephen Pate, NJN Network, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada, Feb. 1 2009

Yesterday morning Google turned off all searches for an hour with anti-porn message “This Internet May Harm Your Computer”.

I thought it might have been the site, which was The Gimp Parade.

Soon I couldn’t get anywhere so I switched to a laptop. It went down.

I Googled the message and it was an anti-porn site warning that said I had been infected by a porn site Trojan.

Cool, I checked and the only thing close was a comment from a transgender site in Wales which accused me of being Hitler Youth 1939. What do I know, I turfed them. Sorry guys. Later things settled down. Turns out Google started the whole shebang along with its Big-Brother friends at StopBadWare.org.

I didn’t know there was a problem. I use Avast and it keeps me from going to “bad” sites that try to infect my computer. StopBadWare spent the day issuing and re-issuing excuses like

This morning, an apparent glitch at Google caused nearly every [update 11:44 am] search listing to carry the “Warning! This site may harm your computer” message. Users who attempted to click through the results saw the “interstitial” warning page that mentions the possibility of badware and refers people to StopBadware.org for more information. This led to a denial of service of our website, as millions of Google users attempted to visit our site for more information. We are working now to bring the site back up. We are also awaiting word from Google about what happened to cause the false warnings.

Somebody’s mother should keep StopBadWare off the Internet. They are a problem.