Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Goog blocked my search

So, anyway, today I was out, and waiting for a kid, and just for fun, I decided to google for "push cs pop ds", just to see what popped up.

(Older geeks will remember that back in the day, it all came down to push cs, pop ds. "Why" doesn't really matter any more, but it was important once.)

Google predictive text offered 'push vs pop ds', and just for fun and to see what it showed, I clicked that.

Much to my surprise, it blocked my search thusly...



"unusual traffic from your computer network"

Hmmm... I'm on my cellphone, on cellular data only.

I tried it a couple more times, with the same result.

Knowing that there are some iOS Zero days circulating, and out of an abundance of caution, I powered my phone off, and on, (It's hard for malware to obtain persistance past a reboot on iOS), and the problem went away.

I don't know if it was malware, or just a bug, but it reminded me that it's not a bad idea to power devices off and on periodically, just to remove malware that's in ram. It's by no means a perfect defense, but it doesn't hurt.

As I've said before, I reckon 2021 is saying "Hold my beer, and watch this!"

Folks, stay safe, and keep your guard up.