
Chrome Blocks Major Torrent Sites Over "Harmful Programs" - snowy
https://torrentfreak.com/chrome-blocks-major-torrent-sites-over-harmful-programs-150710/
======
neotek
Pretty sure it'll be because of the semi-shady ad networks that service
torrent sites and various other filehosts. The networks themselves aren't
shady, per se, but they don't have the resources of Google to adequately
police all of the ads that run through their networks. As a result, they end
up serving malicious ads that link to dodgy installers or even straight up
0-day browser exploits.

~~~
throwaway2048
Google ads themselves serve plenty of dodgey ads, go search "$popular_software
download" for instance.

~~~
neotek
Absolutely, but those ads aren't usually pointing at outright malicious
software, just shitty adware like download accelerators or whatever. Google's
algorithms and manual approval processes have been pretty good at filtering
out anything explicitly malicious, at least in my experience.

~~~
return0
Even malware makes it into adsense , and if i remember correctly it took a few
hours after reporting the ad for it to be removed. It's been a while since i
ve had these reports though.

------
joesmo
At this point, the only think keeping me on Chrome/Chromium is their dev
tools. After the 'Ok Google' binary blob and now this shit, I've just about
had it. At the very least, there should be an option to unblock sites
permanently to fix this. There is absolutely no reason why I should have to
turn off all Phishing & malware alerts just because Google suddenly got a
paycheck from the MPAA/RIAA. Whatever their reason is, it doesn't matter, as
it leads to unsafe browsing regardless. Way to go Google!

~~~
bitmapbrother
You sound like one of those people that latch on to those shoot from the hip
blog posts without doing any analysis of the issue yourself or visiting a site
that does it for you. That binary blob was inactive and had to be proactively
turned on in the settings screen. So was it really an issue? No, but the vocal
minority of anti-Google people made sure to spoon feed the run of the mill and
non tech savvy media outlets about it.

As for turning off all phishing and malware alerts - why would you? Google
gave you a warning about a site. If you would like to ignore it then click the
link below and continue onto the site. If you would like to use a browser that
doesn't care then go ahead and switch.

~~~
McGlockenshire
> That binary blob was inactive and had to be proactively turned on in the
> settings screen. So was it really an issue? No, but ...

Just to be clear about a thing, there _was_ an issue. The automatic download
of the extension occurred in Chromium, the FLOSS software around which Chrome
is built. Chromium is shipped in a multitude of linux distributions, including
Debian. Debian takes their FLOSS standards very seriously. The automatic
downloading of a binary blob by Chromium was a FLOSS ethics issue.

Google went on to address the issue by not just removing the automatic
download, but ensuring that the remaining hooks to enable the audio search
feature were removed.

That's the entirety of the actual, real controversy. The rest is made up
assumptions by people that fail to understand Hanlon's Razor: never attribute
to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

~~~
bitmapbrother
The "actual, real controversy" wasn't the story, though. It was the forced fed
made up controversy that was the real story.

------
anonbanker
This is some pretty hillarious bureaucracy we're seeing here. First, the world
was noticed [0] that google would begin blocking "Unwanted Software", and
included a link [1] to their "unwanted software policy". This means that they
can claim they gave all the torrent sites good faith notice since february,
and even though none of them realized that they would be considered unwanted
software, the time ran out, and google quietly swept these sites under the
rug. They don't seem to be retracting this, either, which means this is
business as usual.

I consider this action to be further proof that "Don't Be Evil" died with Eric
Schmidt coming on board. This is stuff I'd expect out of Microsoft, but it
still surprises me when Google does it.

0\. [http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.nl/2015/02/more-
protect...](http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.nl/2015/02/more-protection-
from-unwanted-software.html)

1\. [https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/company/unwanted-
softwa...](https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/company/unwanted-software-
policy.html)

~~~
rancur
> Don't be evil

heavy load to carry financially and liably speaking

~~~
glimmung
Sure - but Google chose that mantra themselves. As you suggest, it may not be
something we can reasonably expect, all things being equal. However, that's
not the case here - in this case the commenter is comparing their actual
behaviour to their stated policy, which is perfectly reasonable.

------
noobie
Instructions to turning the warning off can be found here[0].

0.[https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/99020?hl=en](https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/99020?hl=en)

~~~
yc1010
If people start skipping and ignoring warnings then what is the point of
warning them, google should provide an explanations as to why exactly this has
happened otherwise THEY are going to harm their users and this will reflect
badly on their brand down the road.

~~~
noobie
I think that the average non-tech savvy user would freak out and immediately
leave the website when encountering the warning, which serves the purpose.

If a user chooses to skip the warning, which isn't made intuitive, (i.e. no
direct access to the "Skip" button) then they probably know what they're doing
but Google should indeed offer explanation.

------
gp7
Given the average user's ability to figure out that blue download buttons are
not in fact download buttons, just ad sites that offer you your download by
name but in fact give you malware, this is the correct decision

~~~
neotek
AdSense delivers a veritable shitload of ads with big blue download buttons.

------
7952
I wonder if politicians have started to notice how much power a few browser
makers have? Protecting Mozilla is so important for the future of the web.

------
yc1010
Is this due to these sites having a lot of advertising (probably serving
malware) or is this a deliberate attack from the media industry by trying to
scare people?

~~~
Phil_Latio
I guess the latter... If you compare kat.cr results with sourceforge.net
results, you would assume sourceforge is blocked as well, but it isn't (only
individual sub-paths of some projects). kat.cr is even delisted @ google. Also
while it's true that kat.cr is serving adware, it does not do so on the
frontpage.

[http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnost...](http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://sourceforge.net&client=chromium&hl=en-
US)

~~~
mathgeek
> Also while it's true that kat.cr is serving adware, it does not do so on the
> frontpage.

Unfortunately the warning has to appear on any page on the domain, since once
you skip it you're essentially white listing the domain. That's why you don't
get another warning on every page.

------
jokoon
I remember that i was getting popups on many torrent sites just by clicking on
the search input field or selecting text, even on tpb and kat.

Not very surprised. The ads they get are pretty bad, and i wonder if the mpaa
or riaa don't have some cog in there.

------
ksk
Rather amusing to see an advertising company like Google protecting Chrome
users from these "extra ads".

I wonder if an OS could block Google's software for vacuuming your information
to Google's servers, never to be deleted.

------
pessimizer
It's probably a single sketchy ad network if not a single sketchy ad. Most
torrent sites use the same few networks; there aren't a lot of choices if
you're a torrent site.

I don't understand the commotion - the warnings look typical, I'm glad google
provides them, and they're easy enough to bypass (at your own peril esp. if
you use Windows.)

I resent this story for forcing me to say something nice about google. There's
a multitude of better reasons not to use Chrome.

------
scottmcdot
This alternative link [1] to KAT doesn't have the security error.

[1] [http://thekatroxy.net/](http://thekatroxy.net/)

------
oneubauer
FWIW this isn't just affecting torrent sites. Some software repos have also
been affected recently.

------
Houshalter
It's probably a false positive from an ad or user content linking to malware.
It's already been fixed.

~~~
cwyers
How is that a false positive, as opposed to just a positive?

------
wnevets
half of the links on these pages (not the torrents) lead to malware, surprised
its taken this long.

------
dimino
All the sites listed were unblocked on Chrome 43.0.2357.132 (64-bit) for OS X.

------
superasn
Not just Kick ass torrents, but almost all major torrent sites including
Torrentz, ExtraTorrent and RARBG [1]

[1] [https://torrentfreak.com/chrome-blocks-major-torrent-
sites-o...](https://torrentfreak.com/chrome-blocks-major-torrent-sites-over-
harmful-programs-150710/)

~~~
Joona
From the article:

    
    
        Update: ExtraTorrent says it successfully resolved
        the issue with Google through webmaster tools.
        RARBG is also unblocked.

------
chippy
TorrentFreak Article about this: [https://torrentfreak.com/chrome-blocks-
major-torrent-sites-o...](https://torrentfreak.com/chrome-blocks-major-
torrent-sites-over-harmful-programs-150710/)

------
kbatten
Shouldn't google block youtube if they care about massive corporate supported
copyright infringement?

~~~
stingraycharles
Who says this is about copyright infringement?

~~~
tomjen3
Given that this is a torrent site, I think that malfeasance is a natural, and
good, first assumption.

Attributing things to ignorance over malice is only going to result in evil
people getting away with it.

------
kp25
Seems like they(3rd party) haven't found a way to stop piracy and started
trying so hard to add malicious code, which may lead to blocking out these
websites by all the major browser vendors and reduce piracy to some extent.

The one behind this, You're gonna lose the war.!

~~~
stingraycharles
This sounds very conspiracy-theory-ish to me. The more likely explanation is
that some ad network allowed malware ads to go through which triggered the
block.

~~~
legulere
Especially when you consider that the ad networks those sites are using are
rather sketchy. Many of the ads there try to trick you into believing they're
the actual download link

~~~
anon1385
>the ad networks those sites are using are rather sketchy. Many of the ads
there try to trick you into believing they're the actual download link

If that's your definition of a sketchy ad network then there aren't many that
aren't sketchy. Google serves ads that do that all the time. It only took me a
few seconds to find this misleading fake download link ad being served by
Google on one of the download pages of download.com:
[http://i.imgur.com/wYAfr7z.png](http://i.imgur.com/wYAfr7z.png)

Would Google blacklist download.com for serving malicious google ads? Somehow
I doubt it.

~~~
rancur
still, considering the mess of code they release every year with new Android
versions, empty promises ('smooth as iPhone') where the solutions implemented
are things like 'project butter' that cranks the CPU frequency to maximum when
you touch the screen to overcome 1. ineffective governor design 2. bloated
software; and generally poor design, it still doesn't seem outside the realm
of reality that

eh, maybe it does.

