N4G Malware Notices: Don't Worry, You're Safe

Hello everyone!

We are getting malware notices on our clickout URLs. This isn't because there is malware on N4G, but because Google has detected malware on sites that we have linked to in the past, likely from search results that people have recently used.

If you read the report from Google at https://www.google.com/safe... you will see that old URLs on our site that people have linked to have had malware, and Google has flagged us for linking to them.

The owners of the site are in the process of working with Google to resolve this issue, since we're not providing malware, only have old links linking to those sites. So, if you see the malware notice, please be assured that it's not on N4G and that you can freely click through at this time to news on other sites because the sites in question have not had news on N4G for over a year.

If there is an update to be made on this item, I will update this blog. If you have questions, post them below and I'll do my best to answer them.

Thank you,
Christopher

[PANDAB]

Thank You! Was getting a bit worried there.

[sabestar]

Thanks for the heads up. Good to see you guys are on top of it. Tbh, even though it's safe, not gonna open links until the issue is resolved. Better safe than sorry.

[-Foxtrot]

Didn't even use a Hitchhikers "Don't Panic" joke

:|

[Christopher]

Dolphins told me it would be a bad idea.

[iRobotGaming]

It won't allow me to click through any link on the site, we are being completely blocked by google.

[Christopher]

Yeah. It's because how we handle clickout URLs. We use a 'static' looking method and they've flagged all 'n4g.com/clickout/...' URLs.

It's kind of a double edged sword. The owners use this method because it's better for SEO and it shows up in search engine results to go directly to the source rather than always to N4G (we're not trying to steal content from people via search engine results). But, in the same token, Google doesn't distinguish between aggregate sites like ours and other sites that actually have malware on their site. To Google, our clickout URLs are individual pages aimed at linking people to malware rather than just clickout URLs to tons of news stories.

[thorstein]

Using Firefox at least gives me the option to select "This isn't an attack site." Chrome doesn't. And since I am on Firefox, why does google have any say?

This is happening in my school district also. Which is why my default search engine is now Bing.

[mmofanatic]

Wow, so it is for sure safe? That was scary lol.

[Imalwaysright]

This only happened to me once or twice and it was about 2 or 3 weeks ago. Didn't happen again since then.