Doing good for the sake of the web, even while dating, that's some next level dedication. :)
(just lightening the mood a bit, but it's a true story. I wasn't asking for google support)
I still have the reocities.com domain, would you like to have it? If so I'll be happy to donate it free of charge.
Edit: sent.
I could foresee in the future all of us having to pay the toll so our hosted websites are considered "safe" too...
Yeah I don't think Safe Browsing shouldn't exist, but it definitely needs some improvements and feedback that's appropriate for how incredibly powerful/dangerous it is.
This has to be the best anecdote for Google's broken tech support that I've ever heard. :)
You might even be able claim strict liability standard since it’s an allegation of professional fraud.
Meaning the standard for proving defamation might be substantially lower than normal.
I’d guess google would settle in the blink of eye unless they had some basis for the claim. And “computer says no” would not cut it in court.
Could still be expensive but not bankruptingly so.
How does this stop bad actors from exploiting bugs in e.g. V8 with malicious JavaScript?
You're correct: it doesn't. Blocking executable files aren't enough. Javascript files, zips containing executables, malicious Word files...all of these are vectors.
No way to manage reports via an API, no way to contact support. I haven't even been able to find a suggestions box, even that would be an upgrade here. Digging to find "the wizard" gets you into some official google "community support" forum where you learn the forum is actually run by a non-employee lawful neutral that was brainwashed somehow into doing free work for one of the wealthiest companies in the world. A lot of the reports are false and I have no idea how they are added (this would be an excellent way to attack a web site btw).
Google will sometimes randomly decide that every link to our over 350,000 neocities sites is "malicious" and tell every gmail user in a pop-up that it is dangerous to go to a neocities site. Users are partitioned to a subdomain but occasionally google will put the warning on the entire domain. It's not clear if it's even the same thing as safe browsing or something completely different, and this one doesn't have a "console" at all so I have no idea how to even begin to deal with it. When users complain, I tell them I can't do anything and to "contact google", which I'm sure just leads them to the same community support volunteer.
We actively run anti spam and phishing mechanisms, have a cleaner track record on this than google themselves with their (pretty neglected) site hosting, and because we block uploads of executable files, it is literally impossible for users to host malware on our servers. It is also impossible to POST form data on our servers because it's just static html.
None of that matters. Occasionally we also just get randomly, completely soft-blacklisted by safe browsing for no reason (they call this a "manual action", there's never any useful information provided, I have no idea what they imply and I live in fear of them).
If things ever got extremely horrible, I used to have a friend that worked at google but she no longer works there (I hated using her for this). The other person I knew that works at google stopped responding to my tinder messages, so I'm pretty much doomed the next time they do something ultra crazy and I need emergency support.
It's extremely frustrating and I'm hoping for the day when something gets better here, or they at least provide some way to actually communicate with them on improving things. In the meanwhile, if anyone happens upon the wizard at a ski resort or something, please have them contact me, I have a lot of improvement ideas.
edit: Just to add here from a conversation I had a year ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21907911), Google still hasn't figured out that the web is their content providers and they need to support them, and treating their producers with contempt and neglect is a glorious example of how shortsighted the entire company is right now about their long term strategy (how many ads will you sell when the web is a mobile Facebook app?). They should as soon as possible, as a bare minimum, start providing representatives and support for the content providers that make people actually use the web and help them to be successful, similar to how Twitch has a partnership program.