Rod.gs its 100% malware free, but Google didn’t care.

Posted in Opinión on Dec 28th, 2011 | 23 comments
Rod.gs its 100% malware free, but Google didn’t care.

UPDATE:
Check site reputation: http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/rod.gs

I’m very very disappointed and angry at Google for banning my URL shortener completely from Google.com, the reason: Some bad user from Russia with the IP 95.58.223.48 and 95.58.222.43 use http://rod.gs to mask some urls from other URL Shortener (http://rs.gs) wich leads to a .jar file that it’s considered as malware.

Here it’s a log from a “wget” I did to traceroute the URL, I have removed the complete urls in order to prevent being banned for this post “because it’s giving malware URLs” ¬¬

wget log

The first problem with Google it’s that it’s banning Rod.gs because it redirects users to malware, BUT that’s what a URL Shortener do, redirections, rod.gs it’s malware free, there it’s not one single file that it’s infected and it doesn’t contain any single line of malicious code, banning rod.gs for redirecting to OTHER sites it’s like saying that Google it’s promoting piracy because shows results form thepiratebay.org, shame on you Google.

The second problem with Google it’s that their algorithms believe that http://rod.gs it’s another common website like any other website and don’t realize it is a URL Shortener service where users are responsible for their actions and not the website in question, a site that can ban any user and/or URL that violates the terms of service and a site that provides the users the availability to ban any URL at any time.

The third problem with Google it’s that they are banning the entire site without giving too much information about the issue, see what the Webmaster Tools diagnostic says:

When Google last tested this page, your server returned content that redirected the browser to a site that serves malware. Unfortunately, Google could not isolate malicious code within this page.

When Google last tested this page, your server returned content that redirected the browser to a site that serves malware. Unfortunately, Google could not isolate malicious code within this page.

Where it’s the malicious code?
Which URL it’s doing the redirection?
Where it’s redirecting?

I still not get too much information from Google but as I said before, I reviewed URL by URL and I have found 5 links that redirected to a .jar file that I suspect it’s the malware they are reporting, but I’m not 100% sure that those URLs are the main reason Google banned rod.gs because the partial information Google it’s giving.

The fourth problem with Google it’s that they are so fucking slow, I reviewed and cleaned rod.gs the very same day I get the first warning screen on Google Chrome, and the very same day I have asked Google Web Master Tools for a review on my site to be available again on Chrome and on Google.com, 3 days later and still waiting, the damage it’s causing to my site it’s irreparable, users are very afraid of infections and malware online, rod.gs it’s 100% clean of malware and the Chrome (and FireFox also) are showing a warning scaring my users and the urls shortened by my users are now useless because the warning.

But the worst thing it’s that I have another project that that loads some flash files from my site and this project its available in more than 6 million websites, which are showing the warning screen on the users who visits those 6 million sites.

When it’s going to be the problem fixed, who knows, the communication with some human on Google it’s inexistent and painfully slow, in the main time I’m screwed with my URL Shortener and a couple of projects more…

Thanks Google ¬¬ (if you didn’t notice, this is sarcasm)

How can I prevent this issues, well, I can pay for some third party to help me fight malware, but I’m not making any money from this service, other way it’s to only admit registered users, but what if users don’t want to sign in with Twitter or Facebook? And I don’t agree to ban all Russian visitors :-/ again, thanks Google.

The thing that scares me the most it’s that with the current discussion about SOPA you can see Googles behavior banning sites it’s not very different from the behavior we are expecting from SOPA supporters, its mandatory get better approaches to this kind of issues, Google has to be more accurate and fast fixing this kind of problems.

23 Responses to “ “Rod.gs its 100% malware free, but Google didn’t care.”

  1. Nina says:
    December 29, 2011 at 1:07 pm

    Dear Rodrigo,
    Thank you for your warning.
    I think it could be very helpful if you could give an explanation in order to avoid this issue.
    Personaly, I have modified the stream-video-player.php in order to reach the player in another URL.
    And it’s working very well !
    For instance, you can issue an update of your tools in wordpress…

    Best Regards,
    Nina

  2. Orkun Xavier says:
    December 29, 2011 at 3:59 pm

    Rodrigo we need the actual adress for “‘http://r-o-d-g-s/_SVP/5.7.1896/” in order to keep your video player on our site and stay away from that google chrome warning about malware. It seems that if we change that short adress to something else, the google warning goes away.

  3. Andy C says:
    December 30, 2011 at 9:16 am

    Does the new plugin do something different? After noticing the ridiculous malware notice I found your post here. Updated the plugin via the 1.3.5 and now the video is no longer showing.

  4. joel says:
    December 30, 2011 at 12:47 pm

    Im still just as confused as when i first started. Are fix 1 and 2 both things we need to do in order for the player to work or they are 2 different fixes? I read them initially as 2 different fixes but after trying the download 1.3.5 I got no result just white. How do I download the file to the directory Ive tried but I dont see how . do i copy and paste everything manually? I dont know please help . I depend on your stream player for my videos Its great

  5. dave says:
    January 1, 2012 at 10:06 pm

    Thanks for being so on top of this Rodrigo! So very appreciated!

  6. Dude1 says:
    January 2, 2012 at 4:39 am

    You rock! But i still have problems , tried your fixes. But i still get the error “Download latest flashplayer”… Maybe just me. Gonna try a diffrent machine later on today.

    • Dude1 says:
      January 2, 2012 at 4:44 am

      I got it working with a small temp fix now. ( Not the best way though) Used the old plugin with fix #3

  7. teddy169 says:
    January 2, 2012 at 1:52 pm

    Thank you for the fixes.. I was about to tear apart the sites like a madman. Have a healthy and Happy New Year..

  8. Oliver Gehrmann says:
    January 3, 2012 at 3:45 am

    I shared your information on my company website (in German) as one of my clients was also affected. Thanks for the great work with the plug-in. :)

  9. Larsson says:
    January 3, 2012 at 7:30 am

    I had a couple of problems, firstly the videos stopped working and I had a yellow box telling me to upgrade flash, so I switched plugins (pain in the ass recreating playlists lol) but still had the same problem. But since I liked this plugin so much I came back then suddenly had the google warning, BIZARRE!

    Anyway, I followed your suggestion which fixed the google problem but none of the videos worked, I still got the upgrade flash warning. I ended up going into the ‘stream-video-player.php’ editing the “//$player->swf” to point to my cdn where I hosted the player.swf file.

    Everything works perfectly now, except IE9 I had to add a display none to the upgrade flash warning container to stop it appearing.

  10. Emiliano Peña says:
    January 4, 2012 at 8:02 pm

    Hello everybody.

    I managed to solve the problem by editing the stream-video-player.php as shown in fix #1.

    Thank you all for your help. This plugin is just great. Happy new year everybody!

  11. @metacowboy says:
    January 5, 2012 at 2:51 am

    Get shortly shocked that my domain get attacked again had the same problem . These time was quite fast and easy to resolve the problem by linking the plugin to my licensed player.
    The problem for your shortl url service is not easy one of the links still point to malware thats why google dont release the url as clean. Even if your domain is secure . In your case its wort case scenario disabled 6 million pages with that move. Not sure how Bit.ly or other short url services handle that kind of links and why they dont get banned. Needs normally 1 day that google release the url after you submit the form to re-crawl your url.

    Good luck and thanks for one of the best plugins in the WP world.

  12. Nick says:
    January 8, 2012 at 9:26 am

    I just tried to install the custom player to my website but all I am getting is a white box. And then WordPress won’t let me update the SVP settings because of permissions, but I am the site owner/administrator. Any ideas?

    Is there a way that I can use the WP Public Plugin to reference a player somewhere else on my web server?

    • Nathan says:
      January 8, 2012 at 10:25 pm

      I am also having problems with the SVP settings page. Not only that, but I completely reinstalled the plugin to see if I could get the embed code button working, and now none of my videos are playing. I get the dreaded “Video not found error” even though these videos were playing an hour ago before I reinstalled the plugin.

      Any info would be helpful Rodrigo. Thanks.

  13. Nathan says:
    January 8, 2012 at 10:01 pm

    Why has this plugin been delisted from WordPress? Also, this plugin is almost impossible to find except for this page. Rodrigo, could you perhaps post the link to the 1.3.5 version in a more prominent place, perhaps at the top of the page, so that users can get to it more easily?

    I am sorry that you are having all this trouble with Google. It must have made your life miserable, especially considering that you have no recourse to clear your name (so to speak). Is there anything we can do as a community?

    Also, I think there was a bug introduced in the 1.3.5 version. The button to generate the shortcodes has gone missing. I am not not if it’s just me or if the plugin is indeed broken. I’d have reported it in your forum, but the navigation on your new theme is not very easy to navigate.

    Thanks for all your hard work.

  14. Nathan says:
    January 8, 2012 at 10:47 pm

    OK. I figured out the problems I was having with the ‘Video not found” and the permissions issue with the SVP admin page. When the plugin is installed/uploaded and decompressed on the server it puts the plugin in a directory named “stream-video-player.1.3.5″ instead of a directory named “stream-video-player”. Fix that and the admin works and the videos are properly found by the plugin.

    That said, there still is no button to generate the embed code, but I can take a code from another video and modify it.