Google releases Safe Browsing API

Google has released an experimental Safe Browsing API to allow third party developers to check URLs against blacklists of suspected phishing and malware sites.

It provides access to the same Google blacklists that power the anti-phishing and anti-malware mechanisms in Firefox and Google Desktop, according to a note on the Google anti-malware blog:

"The API is still experimental, but we hope it will be useful to ISPs, web-hosting companies, and anyone building a site or an application that publishes or transmits user-generated links," the note read.

Some things developers can do with the Safe Browsing API:

• Warn users before clicking on links that appear in your site when they lead to malware-infested pages.
• Prevent users from posting links to phishing pages from your site.
• Check a list of pages against Google's suspected phishing and malware lists.

Developers interested in using the Safe Browsing API can sign up for a key here.  Also see the developer guide.