In an unexpected move from Google, the company has now placed malware infection warnings in search results for users whose connections appear suspicious with the search giant. As seen in the image below, the large warning appears on a search result page, warning the user and suggesting as to how to resolve the problem.
Google posted on their blog that they recently picked up unusual search traffic activity while performing regular maintenance at one of their data centers. In doing so, they determined it was caused by a specific strain of malware that was sending data to Google through intermediary proxy servers. The company has therefore decided to use the results of the discovery to warn all users that exhibit similar suspicious activity. Users may 'test' their computers by simply searching for a word on the search engine site.
The malware itself, according to Google, arrived on peoples' computers through around 100 different variants of fake anti-virus software and has so far believed to have infected 2 million machines worldwide. Damian Menscher, who works for Google as a security engineer said, "we hope that by taking steps to notify users whose traffic is coming through these proxies, we can help them update their antivirus software and remove the infections."
While some may feel that Google's efforts are somewhat breaching in privacy, there are many computer users around the world that would benefit from such a warning appearing on their screens. A significant number of computer owners are not aware that their devices have been infected and so this will no doubt go a long way to benefiting that demographic.
Image Source: Google.com
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