14 DAY TRIAL // Badware is more and more popular over the internet so anyone of us can visit a site and ask himself why they can't press the back button while the popup windows are still opening. Frustrating, but all that we can do is to report the site so that Google can flag it as badware and notify users to avoid visiting the webpage.
Phil Harton, a Google employee, posted a message on his blog to announce the new tool that can be included by webmasters on their site to notify the visitors that it can distribute badware. "Warning users is only part of the solution, though; the real win comes from helping webmasters protect their own users by alerting them when their sites have been flagged for badware -- and working with them to remove the threats," he said.
What can you do if your site has been flagged as badware, but without your approval or you think you can remove it? Phil offers the answer: "if your site has been flagged and you believe you've since removed the threats, email appeals at stopbadware.org to request a review. If that's successful, your site will no longer be flagged -- and your users will be safer as a result of your diligence."
"This version is only the beginning: we plan to continue to provide more data to help webmasters diagnose issues on their sites. We realize that in many cases, badware distribution is unintentional and the result of being hacked or running ads which lead directly to pages with browser exploits," he added. This is a great point of view because there can be many cases when web developers find their sites flagged as badware, the changes being made without their approval or any contribution.