Google is adding a new section to its online Transparency Report, which currently documents data requests from the government, content removal requests, and just recently, National Security Letter information.
Starting now, Google will show information on malware and phishing attacks around the web. Google says that this info comes from their Safe Browsing program, which has been finding and flagging unsafe websites since 2006.
Google’s new page in the Transparency Report on Safe Browsing displays a bunch of new graphs related to the volume of alerts, malware sites, phishing sites, and more. Specifically, users can now see how many users see browser warnings in a given week, how many unsafe websites (in the form of both malware and phishing) are detected by Google each week, how many sites hosting malware Google detects each week, and webmaster response time averages once they are informed of problems with their sites.
“[I]n 2006 we started a Safe Browsing program to find and flag suspect websites. This means that when you are surfing the web, we can now warn you when a site is unsafe. We’re currently flagging up to 10,000 sites a day—and because we share this technology with other browsers there are about 1 billion users we can help keep safe,” says Google software engineer Lucas Ballard. “Sharing this information also aligns well with our Transparency Report, which already gives information about government requests for user data, government requests to remove content, and current disruptions to our services.”