Google says "This site may be hacked" about a post on Metafilter May 8, 2015 10:59 AM   Subscribe

A Google search just turned up a "This site may be hacked" result for a Metafilter post. They recommend against visiting the website until this message disappears from the search result. I disobeyed their recommendation, and nothing jumps out as looking wrong.

How serious is it when Google claims that a site may have been hacked? What does it really mean? Does this often happen when a site has not been hacked at all? Is it just because it is an particularly long discussion?

This was the third result to the search I was doing:2015 Hugo Nominees Announced | MetaFilter
www.metafilter.com/148587/2015-Hugo-Nominees-Announced
This site may be hacked.
Apr 4, 2015 - If you wanted to, you could buy a supporting membership and vote however you like. (FYI, Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor also made ...
(My search was "goblin emperor site:www.metafilter.com", as I was looking for a comment I'd read previously about this book.)
posted by artistic verisimilitude to MetaFilter-Related at 10:59 AM (31 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite

Yeah, odd! Good news is that as far as we can tell that's some sort of false positive blip, not a reason for actual concern about the thread (and the hackery warning is specific to that thread, not to Metafilter results in general).

The less good news is we have no idea so far why it's horking up that warning for the thread. There's no sign of trouble on the back end or in google's actual webmaster tools and messages for the thread, so if google actually has a concrete concern about it they're not telling us in the way we'd expect; in fact, the normal tool they provide to contest/reevaluate a hack or malware incident doesn't even seem to be available because there's no internal message about an issue to then go and contest. So it feels like this may be something more on the fuzzy heuristic side of their filtering processes.

The thread in question is like 2500 comments long, and has a lot of links littered throughout it tracking all kinds of angles on the Hugo nomination controversy, some to potentially fringe-y folks or to sites that might be associated with bullshitty internet hijinks, gomergreebles, et cetera; it's possible that a few links to sites that are themselves either unsavory in google's eyes or have been hacked or something in the interim is just trigging an upstream effect in what google is warning about? But that's just a guess.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:07 AM on May 8, 2015


gomergreebles?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:14 AM on May 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


Garbergroats. Glamourgandalfs. Gozergleekers. It's about ethics in games journalism.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:17 AM on May 8, 2015 [18 favorites]


Comes immediately before hijinks and after folderol in the shenaninganary.
posted by Wolfdog at 11:17 AM on May 8, 2015 [9 favorites]


Hmm. I was totally confused, then. Thought Garbergroats is about Essex in Thames journalism.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:21 AM on May 8, 2015 [17 favorites]


Google let me down. I googled gomergreebles and I didn't even get this thread!
posted by cjorgensen at 11:29 AM on May 8, 2015


Must have been hacked.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:29 AM on May 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


Gomergreebles
posted by cjorgensen at 11:31 AM on May 8, 2015 [11 favorites]


HOW HAVE I NEVER SEEN THAT?! Still laughing.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:35 AM on May 8, 2015


I'm just going to assume you cheated on me.
posted by cjorgensen at 11:44 AM on May 8, 2015


The one that killed me was when he made himself say "what?"
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:02 PM on May 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


Garbergroats. Glamourgandalfs. Gozergleekers. It's about ethics in games journalism.
This appears to follow similar rules to the "Bandersnatch Cummberbund" -esque variations.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:24 PM on May 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Is this something I'd need farfegnugen to understand?
posted by Splunge at 12:44 PM on May 8, 2015


Shaka, when the Fahrvergnügen faded
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:48 PM on May 8, 2015 [15 favorites]


I ate all the Frusen Glädjé
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:51 PM on May 8, 2015


Is it possible that one of the Deck ads has been infected?
posted by Nevin at 1:03 PM on May 8, 2015


Shaka, when the Fahrvergnügen faded

Roomba, at rest
posted by RogerB at 1:07 PM on May 8, 2015 [6 favorites]


Bit of trivia, since pb grabbed all the urls from links in comments from that thread: 582 different distinct links showed up altogether (plus some repeats). A hefty handful each to things like twitter, youtube, facebook, wikipedia; likewise to several different authors' and organizations' blogs. But also a whole lot of one- and two-offs, covering a lot of different ground.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:17 PM on May 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Gomergreebles

Nice shoutout to Steve Martin with the "dogface to the banana patch".
posted by NoraCharles at 1:21 PM on May 8, 2015

ON the shores of Gitche Gumee,
Of the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood Nokomis, the old woman,
Pointing with her finger westward,
O'er the water pointing westward,
To the purple clouds of sunset.

Fiercely the red sun descending
Burned his way along the heavens,
Set the sky on fire behind him,
As war-parties, when retreating,
Burn the prairies on their war-trail ;
And the moon, the Night-Sun, eastward,
posted by double block and bleed at 2:05 PM on May 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


WHAT.
THE.
FUCK.
SERGEI?
posted by uosuaq at 3:46 PM on May 8, 2015


Whatever you do, don't go to gozergleekers.com.
posted by cjorgensen at 3:55 PM on May 8, 2015


I wish I could froinleven like my sister Kate.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:43 PM on May 8, 2015


Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah,
and a brawla, brawla sooit.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:48 PM on May 8, 2015


hey, you got your froinleven on my humplesputz.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 9:20 PM on May 8, 2015


whahut?
posted by a humble nudibranch at 10:29 PM on May 8, 2015


gebbermined
posted by a humble nudibranch at 10:30 PM on May 8, 2015


Potzrebie bveebleftzer fershlugginer?
posted by infinitewindow at 9:53 AM on May 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


Is this something to do with the great lake they call Gitchegumee?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:42 PM on May 9, 2015


I have no idea how these gorgons got their grauniads wedged into their ganders, or why
posted by kagredon at 3:22 PM on May 9, 2015


The mariners all say they'd a made TheWhiteSkull bay....but the winzanovembahcamearlee.
posted by Oyéah at 8:43 PM on May 9, 2015


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