Full screen suspected phishing pop-up when logging into my free site
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When I was in the process of logging into my site this morning a full screen suspected phishing pop-up suddenly appeared on screen preventing me from logging in. It said congratulations and wanted me to click something to answer questions. I closed this down immediately, refreshed and tried to log in again. The same thing happened again. It is now no longer happening and I have since been able to log in as normal. Could you please look at my account and check what happened and that everything is okay and prevent whatever has happened from happening again. I’m really worried about this. I received no threat detected warning before this happened either.
It seems there is an issue with free sites with adverts. My friend(who has a paid plan with no adverts)posted yesterday that suddenly yesterday he was getting the following message from his computer security when reading or trying to comment on free sites with adverts that he visits regularly. ‘ Threat detected! Linktracer detected. Leave site?’
I asked him this morning to tell me what he could see when visiting my site. He says: ‘Yes, I just checked, and your site comes up with the warning ‘Maladvertising’. Oddly enough, your advert banner is still at the bottom of any page, shown by a white bar with a cross on the left to close the banner. But no ads appear.’
Thank you.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Could a staff member please look at my account and sort this out for me and stop it happening again. The exact same full screen pop-up I mentioned yesterday has now appeared again twice this morning. This time it happened while I was logged in and was scrolling down my homepage. When I look at my site I cannot see any advert banners or boxes etc anywhere on my site. As I mentioned yesterday though others say they can see an advert banner at the bottom of my homepage when visiting my site and get a warning about ‘maladvertising’.
Please help. Thank you.
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I don’t see the problems you mention. Did you already check your browser and computer for malware?
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Hi. That’s strange. Already did that and thankfully no malware. The issue is clearly with WordPress and has just randomly started happening in the last couple of days. I need staff to check my site and find out what’s causing this and stop it. It shouldn’t be happening.
Up until a few weeks ago I could see my homepage advert banner but since then I now can’t see it.
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Hi staff I see this too on my site when logged out on both my iphone and edge on my laptop. Only when visiting my site, not when generally web browsing….. Are you sure it isn’t a WordPress.com issue???
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I did read wordpress.com has a new advertising channel, so the problem is probably over there.
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Hi there,
Thanks for the detailed description and screenshots. I have forwarded this to the right team for review. There is an ongoing investigation into this issue. We will be providing an update here as soon as possible.Thanks for your patience.
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Update about this issue. I have been able to login as normal a couple of times today. However, just now while logged in I was scrolling down one of my articles on the homepage and a full screen page came up claiming to be from Norton saying it was blocking access to Vodaphone Customer Reward Program Mega Draws. Click. This also happened a few times late yesterday.
I don’t use Norton so don’t know how that block is coming up unless that has been put on by WordPress. Just to let everyone know that the issue is still happening today.
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Forgot to say that I’ve also just logged out and done a manual search for my blog and clicked onto the site. When I did this the Norton block warning came up preventing me from going to the site.
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I’m annoyed that WordPress.com is resorting to scary clickbait nonsense like this. I think I’m taking a break from this platform until I hear this is no longer an issue. I don’t like the thought that visitors to my site may see these popups. Maybe I’ll set my site to private. Do better WordPress.com.
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FWIW, the extact same thing is happening to my site too. Wasted ages checking my machine for malware.
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Literally just now on this page – https://petespanspecies.wordpress.com/moths-in-a-norton-lees-garden/
Site compromised by phishing scam for two days, not acceptable. If this isn’t sorted in the next day or two I’ll be deleting my WordPress account out of fear for data security.
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Hi there,
We’ve identified and resolved an issue that was causing unexpected redirects or ad behavior on some sites, even for users with a No Ads upgrade. This may also have triggered security software alerts or caused your site to be flagged temporarily.
The issue should now be fully resolved. If you’re still experiencing any unusual behavior, please let us know — we’ll be glad to continue investigating.
Let us know how things look on your end.
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That seems to have done the trick, thank you! But do you have any explanation why our sites were redirecting to phishing scams in the first place?
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Thanks for checking back in @evilsprout — I’m glad things are working as expected now.
As for the redirects, the issue wasn’t caused by anything on your site directly. There was a platform-level problem where ads were being displayed even on sites with a No Ads subscription.
While we don’t intentionally allow any harmful content in our ad network, occasionally third-party ad providers can serve ads that are misleading or violate ad policies. These ads can sometimes include elements that are flagged by security tools as phishing or scam-like.
We have strict filters in place, but in rare cases, bad ads can slip through. When we identified this happening — particularly on sites that should have had no ads at all — we took immediate action to stop them and fix the root issue.
Thanks for your patience while we got that sorted. If you ever spot suspicious behavior again, feel free to let us know right away.
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Hi. I am glad staff are looking into this issue. It seemed okay earlier, but just now I got a Norton block page again while I was logged in and scrolling down on my Blogathons page. Still saying it’s for the same site everyone has been mentioning – Mega Draws. Click
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I’m also facing the same problem with my site…
https://porsche718portugal.wordpress.com
I can’t always replicated, but sometime it also redirects to “megadraws.click”
My site is a free version form WordPress, with a WordPress domain and entirely in the WordPress servers… and for last, as a free version site, they don’t allow to having plugins installed, so, no malware from this front…
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Sory to say, but on my site, it is not yet solved, it happens again just a few minutes ago, so not fully solved yet!
https://porsche718portugal.wordpress.com/
Please solve this ASAP, it is very bat for a platform as WordPress wants to be!!!
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I’ve just received another warning/blocked site message again this morning(10th July) while logged in and scrolling down reading one of my posts. It is still to do with that mega draws . click Vodafone link we’ve all mentioned.
The issue is not resolved despite some staff telling us yesterday that it had been.
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