[R] This site may harm your computer - Google warning about cran website

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 31/01/2009 10:19 AM, Christos Argyropoulos wrote:
> This is extremely annoying (and it smells of rat). 
> As of this time (1013 am ET), Google issues the following nasty warning: "This site may harm your computer"
> when I try to visit any of the CRAN package repository sites or CRAN task view. 
> 
> The funny thing is that Google's Safe Browsing Diagnostic page (it gives diagnostics about any page that
> it may contain Malware) does not seem to be working at the moment, so that the problems that it found
> with CRAN are not available for review.

I suspect that the server that maintained those records was down, and 
their fallback was to assume that if it didn't respond, there was a 
problem.  The error message therefore showed up almost everywhere, but 
is fixed now.

One speculation:  The error page told you you could go to the selected 
URL "at your own risk".  Does that mean they'll assume responsibility 
that all links are safe if they don't warn you?

Duncan Murdoch