This article was written on 10th July, 2012 when the website of Vanguard was momentarily flagged by Google for being infected. The issue has since be resolved by the owners and management of Vanguard News.
The website of Vanguard newspapers, the number one Nigerian website, may harm your computer. This is according to alerts on Google search for results where pages on Vanguard website appears.
Over the past hour that I have been monitoring Google Search, I have noticed that all results containing Vanguard website includes the label This site may harm your computer. To simulate the event, just search for Vanguard news on Google.
This label usually appears on websites that Google thinks may contain software that can be harmful to your computer. Such software can install harmful malware on your computer that can delete files or steal personal information like passwords and debit card details.
For now clicking on Vanguard links on Google search will take you to a page with a bold warning that says Warning – visiting this web site may harm your computer!. For now it is not clear for how long this has been happening, but I will have to guess that it has not been up to 24 hours.
You can still visit Vanguard website if you enter the URL directly on your browser although if you have a good antivirus software you will be shown a malware attack alert. For example attempting to visit Vanguard website on a computer with Avast antivirus displayed the following warning: This web page at www.vanguardngr.com has been reported as an attack page and has been blocked based on your security preferences
This suggests that this issue is serious. It may have been caused by an error in coding or could mean that the vanguard website may have been hacked. Whichever, it is I hope that the Vanguard team recover soonest. For now it is a good idea to keep-off Vanguard websites especially on your phone or if you do not have an antivirus installed.
I will update this post in future.
The issue has now been resolved.
