Hi DP Members, One of my website is showing "Warning: Dangerous Downloads" in the yahoo search results. How can I get it removed. I could not figure out the reason why this warning is being displayed. I have scanned this site(in fact number of times) for virus after this warning is being displayed and couldn't find any. Its almost a month now and I already have written to Yahoo seeking assistance, but of no vein. Actually this site does not have anything to download from it. What could be the possible reason and how this warning could be removed ? Please advise Thanks.
I hope it is not. But unfortunately it is my site. I tried to contact Mcafee, who are doing the virus scan for yahoo, but of no vein again. The site is not on a shared hosting, its on VPS.
The warning on links to suspect sites like your website ""Warning: Dangerous Downloads"" is powered by McAfee's SiteAdvisor, will tell you to proceed at your own risk of getting malicious programs or giving your email address to be shared with spammers and phishers. The Yahoo-McAfee partnership, branded as SearchScan, launched in beta today to help protect users, who may not suspect their exposure until its too late.
Mouse over to the warning and click the Site Owner Support, or go directly to http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/security/search_scan.html ask, report for details why your site is labeled harmful.
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/personal-trainers.com It's reporting the file help.zip to be a trojan.
Hi, PersonalTrainer. Submit a copy of the file help.zip which SiteAdvisor is reporting to contain a trojan, to virustotal.com. I would have done it for you, but I don't know where in your site to download it. Virustotal will scan the file using 33 virus scanners. If none but McAfee find anything wrong with the file then it's sure to be a false positive. My own site Tech-Pro.net has been hit with the same problem. I found that SiteAdvisor is warning of the problem last week. The warnings started appearing on Yahoo! on Saturday. I have proved that it is a false alarm using virustotal, as I described to you. I also had the file independently checked by Sophos Labs. Unfortunately getting the warning removed is proving to be a real struggle. In my opinion (any lawyers here who could confirm or deny it?) since the warning is wrong, Yahoo is guilty of publishing a defamation. They should be liable for damages. Certainly I won't be getting any traffic from Yahoo while that red warning is there. But when I called them on Monday they would not do anything about it, just told me to contact McAfee which I already had. Unfortunately McAfee is not responsive to small companies and individual website owners like us. I know of big companies that have had false alerts reversed within 24 hours, presumably by making a legal threat. I am still waiting, and I have read blogs where people have had to wait weeks for McAfee to do a re-test and change their site rating. To be honest it really didn't matter too much when only people who installed SiteAdvisor in their browser saw the warnings. But now Yahoo! is publishing them so everyone can see them it is a serious matter that can do serious harm to your business and online reputation. I think affected webmasters need to get together and try to do something about this jointly. If companies like McAfee want to set themselves up as guardians of the web, they need to make 100% sure they are right before describing a site as harmful, or else face the consequences.
Could be a outbound link that can create your site be showed as that, i've seen it many times, use linkscanner.com to scan your site in case
I had the same problem with sitepro.net! They said I had a trojan, so I scanned, and nothing. The software they're using is faulty.
You may have an external link that is dubious or spam links. Or someone has inject a code to your site.
Hi Techpro, Thanks for that detailed reply. My site has been scanned several times using all available anti virus tools. We have our own tech department handling several of our sites. They could not figure out any virus in the site. So this make me think that Mcafee site adviser has some serious technical problem, which they need to review. The warning is being shown for last one month for my site. By this time I have contacted the Yahoo team and the Mcafee team (as a user to analyze the site) in order to get the "False Alarm" removed. If these things don't work, as you said, we the webmasters who has been hit have to file a combined petition to review their system.
I don't hold out much hope that anything will happen quickly, nor that anything will change to stop it happening in the future. I can find blog postings and reports of sites that got red-X-ed for a false positive over a year ago. I am quite despondent about it. I thought that this was a good story that some of the media might take up, and that this might shake McAfee into being more responsive to this issue. I contacted The Register and someone at ZD Net and they replied asking for more information but that's the last I heard from them. Perhaps I'm just paranoid but I think that if you're a small one man business, people are afraid that perhaps you really are doing something shady and they don't want to end up with egg on their face so they do nothing. I think McAfee thinks the same way. Even when they have admitted to a webmaster that their site is OK, they have been told they have to wait 4 weeks for the database to be updated. But big companies that can threaten McAfee have had their ratings changed back to green within 24 hours. Individually there is little webmasters can do, but collectively it might be possible to get treated seriously.
One of my sites was tagged almost a year ago and I jumped on it right away. To date, I have written six times about getting the warnings removed and have NEVER had a response. I would love to talk to a lawyer about this.
that is sad that they are taking so long in fixing a problem that is affecting people's sites, the companies should get on it quicker
Well, the more yellow and red tagged sites there are in the search results, the more the gullible public thinks: "Wow, it's a jungle out there, how can I survive without this product?" They are cynically exploiting the public's fear of online dangers, at the expense of small businesses and independent website owners who can't afford to fight back. What is needed is a lawyer who is willing to collect enough evidence for a class action against McAfee, like there was against Google over click fraud. The trouble is, a lot more people use AdWords than have been defamed by SiteAdvisor, and you really need a lot of small cases (or a few big ones) to make a class action viable. As long as they can avoid the risk of a case by dealing with complaints presented by a lawyer immediately, they can continue getting away with taking no notice of those complaints that are made via their web form.
I see you got an article on The Register, Techpro. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/17/siteadvisor_false_alert/ It looks like the issue is starting to get the attention it deserves.