google search

[sunny hucknall]

why does google search tell me that fmuk.org.uk ¨this site may be compromised¨ ?

have you been hacked ?

[Beate]

I don't know why it says that.
I think I'd notice if we'd been hacked.

[steve9872]

Results labeled "This site may be compromised"



If you're the administrator of a site we've identified with this warning message, please visit the instructions found in our Webmaster Help Center to investigate and resolve the problem.

To protect the safety of our users, we show this warning message for search results that we believe may have been hacked or otherwise compromised. If a site has been hacked, it typically means that a third party has taken control of the site without the owner’s permission. Hackers may change the content of a page, add new links on a page, or add new pages to the site. The intent can include phishing (tricking users into sharing personal and credit card information) or spamming (violating search engine quality guidelines to rank pages more highly than they should rank). Learn more about hacked sites

What can I do if I see this message?

If you see the warning message you can contact the webmaster and request that they investigate and clean up the site if it has been hacked. In the meantime, you can continue to the site at your own risk, but you should be careful about providing personal information to the site. If you decide to proceed to the site, make sure that you have the most updated version of your browser. It’s also good practice to ensure that other programs on your computer such as Flash and Acrobat Reader have the latest security updates.

"This site may harm your computer" warning

To be clear, when our malware detection system classifies a site as potentially hosting malware, we show a "This site may harm your computer" message. When we believe a site may be hacked or compromised but have not detected malware, we display "This site may be compromised" as an alert. In both cases, our detection might not be perfect -- we continually work on improving our system -- but it would be wise to proceed with caution.

Hackers may change the content of a page, add new links on a page, or add new pages to the site.

All very well but users do that daily. Google tracks pages on a daily basis and probably comes up with that warning when it finds pages have changed on a regular basis.

I'd be more worried if the "This site may harm your computer" warning turns up.

[sunny hucknall]

well, just a heads-up for the admins.

may be putting folk off visiting.

[AYBG]

I was informed about this a while back, submitted an appeal and forgot about it.

It might be because the front-site runs an old version of wordpress, but I haven't dared update it because there's been no corresponding update to WP-United, the system that links the forum to the front-site.

I'll backup the site sometime and see what happens if I update it, when no-one's on the site, and restore the backup if it screws up...

Incidentally we still bring in a few dozen visitors via google daily.

Edit: message doesn't appear to be showing on google any more, but I'll go ahead with the update attempt anyway when the time is right.

[RickyRaj]

I put the www.fmuk.org.uk into McAfee (http://www.siteadvisor.com) and Norton (http://safeweb.norton.com/) web site checkers and they both found it clean. :)

[steve9872]

Thats because the mods here are strict and have anti-spammer measures in place. The most important of which is your first post has to be approved by a mod before you're free to post anything else. A spammers first post is spam so they end up being banned. If they manage to get round that they can still be banned and all their posts deleted in a single stroke.

[sunny hucknall]

i love the site, keep up the good work.

security issues must be a nightmare, so well done to all involved.

google listing now seems to point to /forums where before it was pointed to the front page , along with the warning.

again, thx for your efforts.

[AYBG]

Tonight I noticed all manner of spam links under the front site posts. A wordpress file must have been compromised because I was unwilling to update it (due to lack of support for the forum integration). This will have been what set google off.

I've made the decision to remove this integration so as to be able to update wordpress. Unfortunately this means we've lost features such as cross-posting, linked comments, user integration, etc. I apologise for this but it is in the interest of security.

In the meantime if you contribute, or want to contribute, to the front site you may need to register for it as it now needs a separate log in. Let me know and I'll make sure your account has the right permissions etc.

Can someone try logging in on the front site with their regular log ins?

[Beate]

I can log in although I am not sure what I am supposed to be doing with that?