Google Shows “Your computer appears to be infected” above some search results!.
If you are seeing "Your computer appears to be infected" message in a yellow warning box at the top ofGoogle Search Results page, you should definitely scan your computer with a good anti-virus and anti-spyware.
Google has announced that it'll show the above mentioned warning message to computers that are infected with a particular strain of malicious software, or malware. The warning message also contains a link toGoogle page which suggests you how to fix the infection.
Here is what Google says:
The Internet brings remarkable benefits to society. Unfortunately, some people use it for harm and their own gain at the expense of others. We believe in the power of the web and information, and we work every day to detect potential abuse of our services and ward off attacks.
Google has announced that it'll show the above mentioned warning message to computers that are infected with a particular strain of malicious software, or malware. The warning message also contains a link toGoogle page which suggests you how to fix the infection.
Here is what Google says:
The Internet brings remarkable benefits to society. Unfortunately, some people use it for harm and their own gain at the expense of others. We believe in the power of the web and information, and we work every day to detect potential abuse of our services and ward off attacks.
This particular malware causes infected computers to send traffic to Google through a small number of intermediary servers called
"proxies". We hope that by taking steps to notify users whose traffic is coming through these proxies, we can help them update their antivirus software and remove the infections.
Note that:
The malware appears to have gotten onto users' computers from one of roughly a hundred variants of fakeantivirus, or "fake AV" software that has been in circulation for a while. Google isn't aware of a common name for the malware.
A couple million machines are affected by this malware.
Most people might think about the potential for an attacker to copy our notice and attempt to point users to a dangerous site instead. It's a good security practice to be cautious about the links you click, so the spirit of those comments is spot-on. The notice appears only at the top of our search results page. Falsifying the message on this page would require prior compromise of that computer, so the notice is not a risk to additional users.
Nice initiative by Google. What do you think? Please post your opinion in your comment...