msn blocking searches - claims of malware

[Research Bank]

Anybody got any idea what this is about?

When doing an MSN and Google search I get a variety of error messages like the below:-

We are seeing an increased volume of traffic by some malware software. In order to protect our customers from damage from that malware, we are blocking your query. A few legitimate queries may get flagged, and for that we apologize. Please be assured that we are hard at work on this problem and hope to get it resolved even better as soon as possible.
If you are using phpBB, please check out the phpBB downloads site http://www.phpbb.com/downloads.php and make sure you are not vulnerable.
- MSN Search Team

Thanks,

[incrediblehelp]

Are you running ranking check software on the desktop that you get these messages on?

[matty21]

Yes i have seen this, they block your ip address and it does seem to be caused by rank checking software, using a high anonomous proxy fixes the problem

[TrafficProducer]

It could be a con so take care

Run :-Anti-Virus (http://www.acomputerportal.com/anti_virus.html) and SpyWare Removal (http://www.acomputerportal.com/spyware_removal.html) tools.

[untmarkb]

I have seen this in both Google and Yahoo. The issue for me was using rank checking software. I have also seen it in Google for certain keywords. If someone else is querying a certain term repeatedly from random ips, then it blocks all queries for that term until can sort out the good from the bad. With Yahoo you usually just have to wait 45 minutes until they reset priveledges for your IP.

-Mark Barrera

Mark Barrera Business Blog (http://www.markbarrera.com)

[DrTandem1]

How very interesting! So, Google doesn't like it when they detect that their site is being abused. However, they seem to be completely unable to do anything about click fraud.

[matty21]

As Mark stated yahoo normally reset your ip after about 45 mins this msn equivelent took about 10 day to clear up the first time i encountered it and about 3 day the second time.

Its not a con, traffic producer, think about it, google and yahoo both have similar precautions against automated queries so why should msn be any differernt especially when msn have enough problems just keeping there search engine online. It seems to me msn need this more than the other two.

[Dorian]

How very interesting! So, Google doesn't like it when they detect that their site is being abused. However, they seem to be completely unable to do anything about click fraud.

That IS very interesting, indeed!