Obviously not a good look for an email marketer. If people reply to you, the reply will still have the original email at the bottom, with the link that you sent, and Google will flag the reply to you as a potential scam too. Your past campaigns are affected too, if someone pulls up one of those old emails and clicks a link.If you do manage to send an email with a blacklisted link, and that link is clicked, you’ll scare the bejesus out of them with the red screen of death.Your Gmail account becomes severely limited and unable able to send any substantial volume of emails.What happens to your email campaigns when you send a URL that’s on this list? Gmail makes you feel like the devil reincarnate. The effect of being listed goes beyond just the web In this case, the URL led to the red screen of death, as did our click-tracked links that redirected to this URL. Notice that the URL behind the link is highlighted at the bottom. In slogging through our logs we found that a Netflix phisher had managed to send 200 emails through GMass on Sunday, February 17. That makes it so that any providing click-tracking services, including URL shorteners and email marketing service providers, have to be extra cautious. Not only does Google list actual phishing sites, but any sites that re-direct to them as well. Ouch! Upon investigating, we found that the tracking domains they use in their email campaigns had ended up on the Google’s Safe Browsing blacklist, and when people clicked links in their campaigns, they ended up on this scary bright red Google warning page. Both APIs are directed at protecting users from malware and phishing, but the new Web Risk API is designed specifically for larger users.Īnd now, back to our story … What happened?Īt the beginning of last week, my team suddenly had a deluge of complaints from users reporting that their links had stopped working, their sending limits had been reduced, and they’d received phishing notifications from Google.Also, you’ll need to apply and be approved to use the API, so don’t wait. This version is a paid service, and if you’re a commercial user, as we are, then you’ll need to switch. Commercial users, like GMass, are required to switch to the Web Risk API by November 11, 2019.Also, a cademic researchers and NGOs will continue to be eligible to use the Safe Browsing API at no cost. If you’re a non-commercial user, you can continue to use the Safe Browsing API, and you don’t need to take any action.Effective September 11, 2019, the Safe Browsing API is limited to non-commercial use only.I’ll explain what happened during our harrowing week in a moment but first, let me share an update about Google’s Safe Browsing API: The list of websites blacklisted though is all maintained by Google, giving Google a disproportionate amount of power over what sites are seen versus blocked. Google has managed to get competing browsers, Safari and Firefox, to use it as well. In fact, it’s so pervasive that it’s not just used by Chrome. There is also a privacy downside: Google may sometimes see your IP address when your browser consults Safe Browsing to check if a site is safe.Google’s Safe Browsing program protects a lot of people from phishing, malware, and other harmful sites. While Google does have a process in place for Website owners to clear an erroneous flag, this process can be tedious and time consuming, and forces a website’s owner to work with Google to correct the error. And being erroneously flagged by Safe Browsing can be devastating for a website’s traffic. It means that Google has the power to decide whether billions of devices will see a dire warning upon going to a website. Safe Browsing provides a useful and important service, but it affords Google a huge amount of control. It can steal or delete your data, or even leave your device unusable. Malware sites try to get users to download malicious software, such as ransomware or spyware, which can have all sorts of damaging effects. Their purpose is to trick people into entering their usernames and passwords for the legitimate site, so the phisher can steal that information and gain access to a person’s account on the site. Phishing (pronounced “fishing”) sites mimic legitimate sites. There are two major categories of malicious sites: phishing and malware. What kind of sites does Safe Browsing warn about? Edge uses a similar (though slightly different) service that’s run by Microsoft. It’s integrated into several major browsers-including Brave, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox-so that they can warn you if you’re about to visit such a site. Safe Browsing is a service, run by Google, that catalogs fraudulent or malicious websites. What kind of sites does Safe Browsing warn about?.
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