Reputation checks now use Google Web Risk

Reputation monitors and the free Website Security Score now check URLs against Google's threat lists through the Google Web Risk API, Google's service for commercial use. They used the Safe Browsing API before. The threat types are the same: malware, social engineering (phishing) and unwanted software.

Your URLs now stay on our servers. We keep a copy of Google's lists, check it for updates every 30 minutes, and check URLs against it ourselves. We only contact Google to confirm a possible match, and then we send a short piece of the URL's hash, not the URL.

The monitor setting is now called Check Google Web Risk. Your existing setting is kept, and so are your earlier results; those are still labelled Google Safe Browsing. When the lookup can't run, for example before the lists have finished downloading or if they have fallen out of date, the card shows Not checked with the reason and nothing is flagged.