Antivirus Used by Millions Blocked All Google Sites by Mistake, Sowing Chaos
A popular antivirus that’s used by millions of people around the world blocked all Google sites and services on Wednesday due to a mistake.
For around an hour on Wednesday morning, some people who had Malwarebytes antivirus installed on their computers could not visit any Google site or use services like Gmail or the Google Play Store, according to people who complained about the issue on Twitter.
Naomi Clark, a game designer and teacher at the New York University’s Game Center, who wrote on Twitter about the issue, told Motherboard that websites “wouldn't load, as if blocked by a firewall.”
“But even before that, my Malwarebytes installation started showing me system notifications that a malware site had been blocked, dozens per minute, all Google domains,” she said. “That's how I realized what must have happened.”
Clark said in a tweet that this issue “reminds you how Google ad-tracking IPs are peppered over absolutely everything.”
