Scam website?
-
Norton Safe WEb has assigned my blog a ‘caution rating’, i.e. identified my blog as a mild security risk, specifically as a ‘scam website.’ Any idea why, and how can rectify this situation? Apparently it’s something to do with an item of content (script or coding that might have recently added) but they can’t tell me why or how unless I open a dispute, which I’m not sure I can since I technically don’t own the site. I’m very frustrated as I don’t want a ‘caution’ rating associated with my lovely blog, potentially deterring readers! Any help GREATLY appreciated! ~Nicky
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
PS ~ the Norton advisor said this: Actually, we are not able to determined which updates or script is that. What I can suggest is to contact the owner of that site for you to know if they added something on their site that detected it as Scam by Norton. What I can suggest is to let the owner of the website send a report to Norton to reevaluate this site so that it will be considered as safe.
-
My guess is that one of your links goes to a website that Norton has identified as scam.
Legally you do own your WordPress blog and WordPress are your site’s host, just because it is under .wordpress.com doesn’t mean its not a website! I would send a report and ask for re-evaluation. At least they might explain why your site is blacklisted.
BTW your site displays as fine on the Google safe browsing page.
-
Ah, thank you SO Much ~ both for the reassurance and the explanation RE possible scam link and ownership. I’ll get onto the re-evaluation rightaway. Thank you! X
-
STRESS! To re-evaluate, I have to register and verify my website. To do so, I have to put a megatag on the homepage. *tears at hair* How do I do that? I’m so sorry ~ I’m not a computer whizz kid at all and this has me really stressed. My instructions are: “Copy the meta tag below and paste it into your Web site’s home page. It should go in the <head> section, before the first <body> section.” Any idea how to do this?
-
OK that’s something you cannot do! I will flag this for staff attention to see if they can either help directly or discuss an alternative verification method fro blogs with Norton.
Please be patient, they are very busy and could take a while to get round to your post.
-
Thank you. My options are:
adding a meta-tag to my home page;
adding a meta-tag to my list of keywords;
or uploading a specific authentication html file to the root folder of my blog.I have no idea what any of this means, but there it is. :-) Thanks for your help.
-
I don’t think you can do any of them yourself, as all of them involve changing parts of the page that are controlled by your theme template rather than bits you can write.
If this issue affects a lot of WordPress users its possible that WordPress will give some means doing one of these things, or they could negotiate/suggest an alternative means of proof for WordPress sites – like setting the tag as an article or page tag.
You could try to contact Norton yourself and tell them that as a WordPress blog owner you cannot register the site
-
I’ve sort of told them that but they came back saying that WordPress then has to deal with it. Rock and a hard place…?
-
Hi @Nicky,
I would love to be able to assist, however Norton will have to rescan your site in this case. They do have the tools to be able to state definitively which link, script, etc is causing issues (if there even are any, such sniffers are prone to false positives), and once we have that information we can work on getting them sorted out.
In regards to getting your account verified, there is no way for us to provide any of the means which they mentioned. If they can allow a DNS-based means of validation, we can provide that, however html-based ones are not available.
-
Hi ya, amightywp. Thanks so much for your response. I will get back in touch with Norton. Before I do so, however ~ what’s a DNS-based means of validation? What does it involve? Sorry to be pesky, it’s just that otherwise I’ll be pinging back and forth between the two tech sites without any knowledge of what I’m asking. :-) ~Nicky
-
Heya Nicky,
I sincerely apologize, I had thought your account had a Custom Domain mapped to it. Validation through DNS requires that an account has a domain attached to it. If there is a domain, then we can add a code which a third party (such as Norton) provides to the domain in such a way that they see it, and they can know that it belongs to you and therefore so does the site.
However since there isn’t a domain, this isn’t an option.
In any case, they should still be able to rerun the scan on your site and be able to provide additional information.
-
I’m so sorry to be a pain. :-( The problem is, they won’t re-evaluate the site unless I verify ownership. And I really, really want that caution rating lifted before it puts people off! I’ve run the site through some other scans and it’s got a clean bill of health so I’m very frustrated. I’m waiting to chat with an online adviser now but they’re not very …um… well versed in the Norton Safe Web side of things, and there’s no support for that side of their business. Sooo frustrating! Is there absolutely no way of putting those tags in there somehow? I noticed there’s a space for putting meta tags in for Google and Pinterest now?
-
Here’s what I did. I disabled Norton and will never buy it again. I now use a security program that does not result in this conundrum.
-
Ah, but the problem is that the blog would STILL get an orange caution rating, whether I subscribe to Norton or not. It’s even turning up orange when I google myself. It’s nothing to do with being their customer ~ it’ll show up orange for ANYONE who uses Norton. That’s why I need this fixed!
-
-
-
:-) Thanks for the LOL. I’m on it. Alas, they’re dragging their heels on this matter of the website verification. I am so sorry to take up your time, folks. It’s a small nightmare when you’re just an average jo-blogs (pun intended) with limited technical knowledge. Thank you for bearing with me.
-
I’m GREEN and rated ‘safe’ again, hooray. Here’s what it took:
~a determined call to Norton customer support (note ~ Not NORTON SAFE WEB support, as there is no such thing) demanding to speak with a manager;
~said Manager then taking a look at the blog with me (finding no suspicious pop ups, links or anything), checking blog’s rating, checking the wordpress.com rating, getting thoroughly confused and feeling my pain;
~said Manager attempting and failing to put the required coding into the blog;
~ going through the motions of blog verification and sending a feedback form explaining why blog couldn’t be verified;
~and then said Manager sending another email to the Safe Web team requesting the site to be manually verified and re-evaluated.
Total time requirement discounting previous calls and emails: 1 hour. Total time to resolution after call: 20 hours. Result: this morning I am once again rated a safe blog. I hope this doesn’t repeat itself. Thank you all for your support. -
This needs to be fixed buy Norton not at this end.
edit: “buy” was meant to be “by”
Well if you have enough money then “buy Norton” would be one way to get fix the problem!
- The topic ‘Scam website?’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 