Google Marks Unsafe Sites As “Repeat Offenders”

Google’s Safe Browsing search policy is not exactly perfect, but the company is making an active effort to improve it in order to guarantee the online safety of its users. Up until recently, websites that didn’t respect Google’s policies regarding malware and phishing would become flagged, but webmasters could easily just stop their activities for a while and resume them after the warnings were removed. This method will no longer work, it appears, as Google has begun to mark unsafe websites as “repeat offenders,” and the kicker is that webmasters won’t even be able to appeal the warnings for 30 days.

Even though these warnings will not be able to stop you if you actually want to visit a flagged site, a warning page in Google Chrome will also pop up in order to try to dissuade you. It’s worth noting that hacked sites will not be flagged as repeat offenders, but only those “that purposefully post harmful content will be subject to the policy.” There’s no denying the importance of Google’s Safe Search system, but there’s always room for improvement, particularly when it comes to email phishing attacks. Although this is undoubtedly a much tougher nut to crack, it would definitely help if Google found a way to limit the damage done by these attacks, or maybe even stop them altogether.