Page 1 of 1

Norton warning for unsafe site while site is safe

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 1:24 pm
by matthijs
Not sure if anyone can answer this, but if I google on words related to this question I only get thousands of results with sites trying to sell me Norton (come on Google, you can do better than that!).

Anyway, a client called me to say his Norton program warns that his website might not be safe. I checked the website and can't find anything suspicious. Can this be a false-positive? Does anyone know where I can find more info? Some general computer/security forum maybe?

Re: Norton warning for unsafe site while site is safe

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 4:36 pm
by Benjamin
"depending on the site, it could be triggered by an ad from an ad network that contains possible malware"

Re: Norton warning for unsafe site while site is safe

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 4:40 pm
by matthijs
There are no ads on the site. The only script on it are 5 lines of simple javascript and google analytics.

In the meantime I discovered that its possible to submit a request to Norton to rate the site and put it on a white list. Quite the hassle. Maybe I should sue Norton for falsely scaring customers away from my sites

Re: Norton warning for unsafe site while site is safe

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 4:41 pm
by Eran
Is he using shared hosting? it's possible the server he is on or the domain he is using has fallen into a blacklist for spam / malicious activity by another user on the same server.

Re: Norton warning for unsafe site while site is safe

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 4:55 pm
by Benjamin
It may be the IP is flagged as a malware threat especially if its on a shared server. You can try adding the site here for review http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diag ... google.com

Re: Norton warning for unsafe site while site is safe

Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 1:26 am
by matthijs
@Benjamin: good idea. Didn't know that safebrowsing check from google. Bookmarked

@pytrin: yes, shared hosting. I'll see if I can find anything

To be clear: the website is not flagged as dangerous, but as "unconfirmed". So visitors using Norton would see a question mark or something. I haven't seen the exact message myself, since I don't have a PC with Norton to test with. But it seems that every site that is not yet whitelisted is marked as "unknown/unconfirmed". Most of them will turn out to be safe. However, to a visitor seeing such a question mark instead of a green checkmark for "safe" already looks suspicious.