Pete Freitag Pete Freitag

Google says disable your firewall

Published on December 10, 2005
By Pete Freitag
web

When using GMail I sometimes get the following error message:

Arrgh! The page has been corrupted. If you are running security or firewall software, you may have to disable it

This is a bad error message for a number of reasons.

  • They are telling me that I may have to disable my security, or firewall.
  • The error message is simply: The page has been corrupted. What does that mean? Is it involved in organized crime? money laundering? it doesn't sound good to me, the last thing I want to do is turn of my security or firewall. Error messages like this scare the crap out of non technical users. This is the kind of error message that when my parents get, I receive a phone call.
  • Arrgh! - also would scare my parents. I'm all for error messages that show a human side, but this gives the impression that Gmail is mad at me.

The thing that gets me is that this is not a security or firewall issue for me, it happens randomly, so I would guess that this is probably actually due to a bug on Google's end.

Another thing - my parents do actually have a gmail account, so lets not think that Gmail is only for early adopters. Plenty of non technical people are using it.



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Google says disable your firewall was first published on December 10, 2005.

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Comments

It's not better solution ...

And google say that?
by Jauhari on 12/11/2005 at 10:17:55 PM UTC
Pete, I coincidentally posted a blog entry of my own tonight on a similar (but different) Google error that I, too, concluded is not what it says it is. Don't know that it will be useful to you, but just in case, here it is:

http://tipicalcharlie.blog-city.com/seeming_google_error_may_be_in_your_search_string.htm
by Charlie Arehart on 12/11/2005 at 11:28:08 PM UTC
Hi - It is suggested I disable my firewall so I can work on my website. I don't even know what one is. Can someone help please help me?
by stovallranch on 12/15/2005 at 8:06:36 PM UTC
re: stovallranch

Don't worry you don't need a website.
by Paul on 01/25/2006 at 6:12:17 PM UTC
My solution to the GMail Corrupted Page Problem
For me, it happens on the spam page.

At the bottom of the page, click on "basic HTML."
Go to the spam page. Manually select all the spam. Delete forever. Switch back to "standard" mode.
by Andrew Faber on 03/07/2006 at 8:52:36 AM UTC
who can teach me how too disable the firewall??? My computer's control panel didnt have firewall setting or security setting can some want help me??
by Kenny on 07/29/2007 at 5:05:24 AM UTC