23 May 2008, 13:55

Google extends Safe Browsing API

Google has extended its Safe Browsing API used by client applications to search Google's phishing and malware black list and warn users against malicious pages. Firefox and Google Desktop are among the applications that already use the Safe Browsing API. According to Google, in the past users and web site operators found it difficult to understand why a certain page was classified as suspect. The search engine operator has now provided a "diagnostic page" that explains the rationale.

The page is rated as malicious because its user profiles contain hidden JavaScripts which load exploits

The page contains information about how the page is rated, when Google last visited it and what anomalies were noted by the crawler at that time. The report for the Wikipedia English language front page, for example – http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://en.wikipedia.org – shows a clean bill of health.