From The Australian newspaper (online): "PEOPLE using the internet search page Google were stunned to see erroneous messages reporting that every site turned up in their results might be harmful." http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24991997-12377,00.html I don't know how widespread this problem was (possibly only affected Australia?) but I was one of the people affected by this. I wouldn't say that I was stunned. It was more a sense of frustration that my late-night attempt to get linux running properly on my brand-new laptop was made even more painful by my having to cut-and-paste URLs to pages containing potential solutions into another tab, because Google (and StopBadware.org) had erroneously identified the site as potentially hosting malware. It was also a sense of concern that my life is increasingly so contingent on the Google search infrastructure (without the help of those online forums, the new laptop was essentially an expensive paperweight). OK, I acknowledge that I could have used another search engine. Also, at least I could still search, even if it was made more inconvenient. I also acknowledge that the problem was fixed within an hour. But I think it is somewhat troubling that the increasingly important service of online search can be compromised (even just for an hour) by a research project. This might be a bit of a stretch, but what if water or electricity services were inadvertently cut or restricted because of a research project focusing on "consumer complaints". -- ------------------------------------- Dr Robert Ackland Fellow and Masters Coordinator Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute The Australian National University e-mail: robert.ackland@anu.edu.au homepage: http://adsri.anu.edu.au/people/robert.php project: http://voson.anu.edu.au ph./fax: +61 2 6125 0312/+61 2 6125 2992 mail: Coombs Building, 9 Canberra, ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Information about the Master of Social Research (Social Science of the Internet specialisation): http://adsri.anu.edu.au/study/msr.php -------------------------------------