14 DAY TRIAL // It seems like Google’s Safebrowsing features has caused quite a bit of problems for URL shortening service Bitly and its users. The feature, which is used by browsers such as Google’s own Chrome and even Firefox, highlighted Bitly’s URLs as malware-ridden or as phishing attempts.
Many Internet users have reported issues with accessing Bit.ly links, as they were greeted by a warning regarding the content of the sites they were trying to visit. Since this only happened for Bit.ly URLs, it was clear that the problem wasn’t with the sites people were trying to visit, but with the way Google’s feature was interpreting them.
The problem didn’t extend to Internet Explorer or even Safari, but it did plague Firefox and Chrome users.
There’s a reason why Google’s feature is blocking Bit.ly and that’s the fact that part of the site was listed for suspicious activity 32 times over the past 90 days. Of the 91,549 pages they tested on the site over the past 90 days, 721 pages resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user content, including Trojans, exploits and scripting exploits.
“We are aware of some intermittent issues with Chrome + Firefox. Our team is investigating the issue to solve ASAP,” Bitly wrote on Twitter not too long ago. After a little bit of digging, Bitly stated that it had been incorrectly listed in Google’s Safebrowsing which caused users to receive the malware warning, but the problems have been rectified.
Curious situation
The fact that Bitly landed on the blacklist is a little bit weird since all the service does is provide people with a shortened version of the URL, which would take less space in various locations. The issue with services such as Bitly, however, is the fact that people can hide whatever links they want behind the bit.ly format, including some that lead to malware infested pages.
When you click one of these links, you don’t know exactly where you’re going to land, which is a bit of a security issue. Blacklisting all Bitly-generated links, however, isn’t the right way to go and it’s clear that it must have been a misunderstanding since Bitly in itself doesn’t host any pages with malicious software and so on.
The company had temporarily switched to new Bitlinks to use bitly.com while the issue was getting resolved, but now that everything is in order again, all data and links are back in working order both on Chrome and Firefox.
We were incorrectly listed in Google Safebrowsing which caused users to receive a malware warning. This issue has been resolved.
— Bitly (@Bitly) October 25, 2014