Do Bing Search Engines Have A NEW DEFINITION Of Malware?

UPDATE: Our entire TORRENTLAWYER.COM domain is now banned from Bing Search Engines (including all DuckDuckGo searches, and other search engines which pull their content from Bing). We suspect this is because Bing has a new definition of malware — “website content (words) that can harm the reader.”

To confirm this, here is the link that you can use to check whether our TorrentLawyer.com website is on Bing:

(On a Bing Search Engine): site:www.torrentlawyer.com

Since I noticed the traffic drop to zero from Bing a few weeks ago, I have been in touch with Bing trying to “fix” the problem. At first, I thought it was a WordPress plugin (providing features to our website) which might have been causing a problem.

new definition of malware — Do Bing Search Engines have a NEW DEFINITION of malware? 5

The Bing Webmaster Platform has provided me hints on why my website was banned.

It was the Bing Webmaster Platform which provided me hints as to what I am horrified to think might be happening.

WE HAVE CHECKED: THERE IS NO MALWARE ON OUR TORRENTLAWYER.COM SITE.

TO BE CLEAR: Our TorrentLawyer.com website has always been very strict with security. We run firewalls, we have security plug-ins, and we pay for the services we use. We regularly run malware scans with multiple companies, and our website has always been free of malware.

I could not understand why the Bing Webmaster Website classified our content as “malware.”

What was confusing to me is that on the Bing Webmaster Website, I could not understand why some of our articles were classified as “malware.” These web pages did NOT have malware.

The way they banned our TORRENTLAWYER.COM domain was that they marked the “/” page as having malware. It does NOT have malware, we have checked, re-checked, and have had other companies recheck.

THERE IS NO MALWARE.

To confirm this yourself, these links have been provided to me by a friend (I’m not sure he wanted me to share his info, so I’m posting the links).

Bing elevated my ticket, and then explained that my TorrentLawyer.com website certainly violates Bing’s guidelines.

As a quick update, after communicating with Bing trying to resolve the problem, they elevated my ticket, and then responded that “our TorrentLawyer.com website certainly violates Bing’s guidelines.”

Now Bing has added most of my articles and pages to be classified as “malware” on their Bing Webmaster platform.

Here is the strange thing. After confronting them on the malware question (again, our website has no malware), the following day, I observed a change of how many more of my pages were classified on their Bing Webmaster Site. Bing classified mostly all of my articles and pages on my Torrentlawyer.com website as “malware”.

Again, I know this wasn’t there before because I was watching this category literally the day before trying to find out why my website was banned from Bing Search Engines.

021822 Bing new definition of malware Site — A snapshot of Bing’s Site Explorer for our Torrentlawyer.com site. As you can see, they have now excluded 2.1K of our website’s links. AND, even though it appears as 1.5K pages are still indexed, they are still banned from being shown on Bing Search Engine Results.

Bing has now restricted my account to prevent me from adding or updating URLs on their search engine.

In the past few days, Bing has restricted our ability to add URLs to their search engine. The default is that users can add 1000 new URLs per day.

Bing initially lowered my ability to submit new URLs from 1000/day (originally), to 10/day, and as of yesterday, it was lowered to 0/day. They have not even given me a chance to contest or correct their new classification.

So what in the world is happening at Bing?

I suspect Bing has a new definition of malware. Does “malware” now include harmful content (instead of harmful code)?

I am grief-stricken to even consider this possibility. I am concerned that Bing might have a new definition of malware.

Definition: Malware is code that can infect the machine that accesses that code.

New Definition: Malware is website content [code] that can infect the reader [machine] that accesses that website content [code]?

Is it possible that the term “code” now means “website content” [meaning, harmful words on a webpage which could now be classified as harmful “code”]?

Is it possible that the term “machine” now includes not only the computer, but the reader who accesses the content (code) of the website?

Because if so, then yes, my website articles can all be considered malware — each article provides useful content which can affect the thoughts of my readers.

What I told Bing to explain the content on my TorrentLawyer.com website.

This is a snippet from my most recent e-mail to the Bing Search Engine (I added the bullet points):

“TorrentLawyer.com” is a blog of the Cashman Law Firm PLLC.
We do not encourage piracy, nor do we link to any content which infringes the copyright rights of any copyright holder.
All content on that website discussed copyright infringement lawsuits filed in federal courts, as we represent clients in those lawsuits.
All of these lawsuits surround the defendants’ alleged use of the BitTorrent networks, hence the name “TorrentLawyer.”
As for our beliefs, we believe in the enforcement of U.S. copyright laws and statutes.

Our law firm’s mission is to fight against entities known as “copyright trolls,” who misuse the U.S. copyright laws to monetize their copyrights rather than to take steps provided to them by the DMCA to stop the infringement of their copyrighted content.
Lastly, there is NO ADULT CONTENT on our website. The lawsuits in which we represent clients are adult film companies, e.g., Strike 3 Holdings, LLC and formerly, Malibu Media LLC.

However, we do not endorse or encourage the viewing of adult content, nor do we link to adult content on our website.

Is anything here so offensive that they should classify my articles as “malware” and block my entire TORRENTLAWYER.COM domain from posting useful content on their Bing Search Engines?

Even Bing’s own Site Explorer shows I have NO URLs with Guideline Issues.

Lastly, IF our TORRENTLAWYER.COM website violated Bing’s guidelines, wouldn’t it show up in their Site Explorer under the “Filter by: URLs with guidelines issues” category?

As you can see from the attached screenshot, there are “No URLs Applicable” to this category.

021822 Bing Guideline Violations Snippet None — Do Bing Search Engines have a NEW DEFINITION of malware? 6

So I guess the question that needs to be asked is…

“If there are no Bing Guidelines Issues, why does my TorrentLawyer.com website have Bing Guidelines Issues?”

-Rob