For some time now, Google has published its Transparency Report, which gives a high-level overview of how Google relates to events in the world at large. The report has historically included several sections:
- Traffic to Google services (current and historical, highlighting disruptions)
- Information removal requests (by copyright holders and governments)
- Requests for user data (by governments)
This information can be interesting in light of current events. For example, at this writing, Google reports ongoing disruptions to their services in Pakistan, China, Morocco, Tajikistan,Turkey, and Iran.
Now, according to a post on the Official Google Blog, a new section will be added to the Transparency Report. The report is an outgrowth of work begun in 2006 with Google’s Safe Browsing Initiative.
So today we’re launching a new section on our Transparency Report that will shed more light on the sources of malware and phishing attacks. You can now learn how many people see Safe Browsing warnings each week, where malicious sites are hosted around the world, how quickly websites become reinfected after their owners clean malware from their sites, and other tidbits we’ve surfaced.
Google says that they flag about 10,000 sites per day for potentially malicious content. Many of there are legitimate sites that have been compromised in some way. The “Safe Browsing” section of the Transparency Report shows the number of unsafe sites detected per week, as well as the average time required to fix them.
Google, because its search engine “crawlers” cover so much of the Web, has an overview of what’s out there that few organizations can match. I think they are to be commended for making this information available.
Random Walks 