When you review a set of users behaviour’s you can determine a whole heap of things – from popular posts, abandoned shopping cart transactions, failed downloads etc. Overall we use that information to improve the overall experience our visitors and users have of our websites (or, at least, we should).
However, as Google proved the other day, that ‘patterning’ can be used to also detect things like virus infections on computers. Google are able (to an extent) determine if a computer may be affected by Malware – and display a warning on your search screens. I found out about this when Matt Cutts posted an update on Google+ the other day.
I was asked if I thought this was the real deal – and from what I can see, it sure is…
According to Google’s Blog Post:
After collaborating with security engineers at several companies that were sending this modified traffic, we determined that the computers exhibiting this behavior were infected with a particular strain of malicious software, or “malware.” As a result of this discovery, today some people will see a prominent notification at the top of their Google web search results
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.
Google goes on to share that the malware appears to be propagate through variants of fake antivirus downloads. There doesn’t appear to be a common name for the malware.
When asked about the potential for an attacker to copy the notice and send people to a malicious site, Google answered:
“It’s a good security practice to be cautious about the links you click, so the spirit of those comments is spot-on. We thought about this, too, which is why 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.”
On a final note about this particular strain of infection – it only seems to affect PCs (not MACs).
This is an awesome thing – and I believe it’s a great step forward in managing our computer protection. It doesn’t mean though, that we as computer users shouldn’t be vigilant and shouldn’t use anti virus software. In fact, we should be using an antivirus program, scanning our computers at least once a day and updating our antivirus databases on a daily basis as well. Vigilance is key.
Other steps that we, as business owners, can do to ensure the integrity of our computers and protect from virus infection include:
- Don’t click on links in emails from people we don’t know. Check the link visually and type it into your browser. Many malicious emails will display one URL and have another ’embeded’ in it.
- If you are presented with a flashing alert on your screen when you visit a website that says your computer is affected – don’t click on the link, don’t download anything! Close the page in your browser and scan your computer immediately. If you want to check whether a website is ‘safe’, I’ve found Unmask Parasites to be excellent.
- Ensure your anti virus software updates daily – as new malware is found most Antivirus providers add these to their ‘code’ and your system will be protected when you update.
- Share these guidelines with your Staff and Subcontractors – protecting yourself may not be enough, if one of your ‘co workers’ becomes infected it can have far reaching effects.
- Keep your Windows updates, up to date!
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