Comments on: Google App Engine not blocking PayPal?

By: mitek

mitek — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:05:56 +0000

Hi Aral,

It looks like you not subscribed to Slashdot
Here is the link:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/31/1452238

So, if Ebay(PayPal) restricts all the payments to PayPal, why not Google to restrict payments to Google Checkout only?
Sounds logical to me.

Cheers,
Dmitri.

By: Aral

Aral — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:03:54 +0000

@flex: Whatever it was is not that important any more — it was discussed publicly, Google responded, the issue has been fixed, end of story.

That’s how we deal with things on the Internet — snap, snap! :)

By: Aral

Aral — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 07:56:39 +0000

Oh and guys, I’m going to fix the one white pixel issue right _after_ I launch the new Singularity teaser site on Google App Engine.

I know, I know, priorities! :)

Seriously though, that little guy’s been bothering the heck out of me too!

By: Aral

Aral — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 07:48:40 +0000

Thanks, Marzia, I’ve updated the blog post with your comment.

By: flex

flex — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 07:01:04 +0000

Come one .. enough with the conspiracy theories already.

Of course this is a non-intentional bug. Google is not this stupid – thinking they can block PayPal without anyone noticing – *AND* if someone notices just call it a bug. Does that sound like a plan someone at Google would come up with?

:-)

By: Chad Udell

Chad Udell — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:04:07 +0000

How about payments through Google’s own payment system? Sounds a little to convenient to call it a bug.

By: xxx

xxx — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:21:00 +0000

To be fair, many phishing attacks *are* related to PayPal, so it’s not obviously *complete* nonsense.

And anti-phishing solution clearly *has* to work with specific URLs, that’s how you blacklist, well, specific URLs that host scam pages.

By: Shane Conder

Shane Conder — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:25:00 +0000

Wow, this is pretty serious. And an error in anti-phishing that blocks specific URLs? Specifically, competitive URLs? Yikes.

They could take a service down and be like, “Oops, sorry, we were just trying to be good and block phishing attempts.”

Uh huh.. Thanks for the post Aral.

By: Marzia

Marzia — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:14:04 +0000

Hi Aral,

We posted this on the groups, but I just wanted to follow up on your blog post as well.

This is a bug, and we have located the problem. There was an error in our anti-phishing protections that was blocking some specific URL domains from being fetched using the URLFetch service. This was an oversight on our part, and these specific domain restrictions will be removed in the next few days.

Thanks,
-Marzia

By: markus

markus — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:11:50 +0000

You really think this is a bug? A rival site that generates money for google being blocked is a “mistake”?

Hrm. Let’s wait a bit before judging, but I have a slight suspicion …