Simple Tips to Deal with Fake Sites

Of the millions of webpages that Google scanners analyze for phishing, 9 out of 10 phishing pages are successfully identified. Google's classification system only incorrectly flags a non-phishing site as a phishing site about 1 in 10,000 times, which is significantly better than similar systems. These “false positive” sites are usually built to distribute spam or may be involved with other suspicious activity. If any one finds that his site has been added to the Google's phishing page list (”Reported Web Forgery!”) by mistake, it its better to report the error to it. On the other hand, if the site has been added to Google's malware list (”This site may harm your computer”), follows instructions are helpful in that regard. Google team tries to address all complaints within a single day, and they usually respond within a few hours.

Unfortunately, sometimes when Google team tries to follow up on those reports, it gets as confused as its automated system. If any Google user runs a website, here are some simple guidelines that will allow Google to quickly fix any mistakes and help keep the site off its phishing page list in the first place.

Don’t ask for usernames and passwords that do not belong to your site.

Google considers this behavior phishing by definition, so don’t do it! If anyone want to provide an add-on service to another site, it is better to consider using a public API or OAuth instead.

Avoid displaying logos that are not yours near login fields.

Someone surfing the web might mistakenly believe that the logo represents the user's website, and they might be misled into entering personal information into the user site that they intended for the other site. Furthermore, Google can’t always be sure that the user is not doing this intentionally, so it might block your site just to be safe. To prevent misunderstandings, Google recommends exercising caution when displaying these logos.

Minimize the number of domains used by a site, especially for logins.

Asking for a username and password for Site X looks very suspicious on Site Y. Besides making it harder for Google to evaluate any user's website, the user may be inadvertently teaching his visitors to ignore suspicious URLs, making them more vulnerable to actual phishing attempts. If the user must have the login page on a different domain from the main site, it is better to consider using a transparent proxy to enable the visitors access this page from the primary domain. 

Make it easy to find links to the site pages.

It is difficult for Google as well as for a website’s visitors to determine who controls an off-domain page in the user site if the links to that page from the user's main site are hard to find. All it takes to clear this problem up is to have each off-domain page link back to an on-domain page which links to it. If the user have not done this, and one of those site pages ends up on Google's list by mistake, it is advisable to mention in the error report how Google can find the link from the main site to the wrongly blocked page.

Don’t send strange links via email or IM. It’s all but impossible for Google to verify unusual links that only appeared in the user's emails or instant messages. Worse, using these kinds of links conditions the visitors/customers/friends to click on strange links they receive through email or IM, which can put them at risk for other Internet crimes besides phishing.

While Google hope that the users will consider these recommendations to be common sense, it has seen major e-commerce and financial companies break these guidelines from time to time. Following them will not only improve the user's experience with Google anti-phishing systems, but will also help provide the site visitors with a better online experience.

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