I’m starting a new category(?) for discussion. Jim suggested I simply put “Business Corner” in the title.
Please participate. TBP has a treasure trove of professionals and maybe from time to time we can help each other.
My first Business Corner post is about website security as it relates to McAfee.
I have a business website (yet to launch but close). I have no affiliation with McAfee but they found it necessary to put it on their blacklist. There is nothing wrong with my site as far as I, my developer or my hosting service (Siteground) can tell.
Q1:
Has anyone dealt with this type of highwaymen type of tactic from McAfee? Q2:
Do you know what affect this will have on my site as it relates to customer hesitancy to interact with my company website?
After some googling, I found some who say this will not affect me (my hosting service included) and I have found another experience someone had when trying to post their website URL to facebook but facebook would not allow it to be posted. No, I do not care about facebook but I believe many of my clients will be on social media.
This is the first post for Business Corner. I hope people will find value in it.
Screw PCs. Get a MacBook or iMac, and you don’t need security software. We switched from Dell in 2011 to Apple. The iCloud link to iPhones and iPads is a big plus.
WIP,
Create a ticket number with
https://www.trustedsource.org/
and make them your bitch.
You got this.
How do I make them my bitch? Can’t they decide to simply ignore me?
I’m not a customer of theirs.
Could be a bad file uploaded, a SSL (secure sockets layer) security certificate misfire, password security, or numerous other glitches. If it’s McAfee’s blacklist they should be able to advise you of the issue.
Another source you might try:
Unony,
Thanks for the tips. I’ll give it a try.
No help at all, but I’m watching and hoping this topic becomes “a thing”. There are some here that I would like to support if they have an online presence. I like to use my $ for things/people I support when possible.
I have a domain I bought 3 years ago and have only used it for personal file storage and learning sql. I created QR stickers that recorded some specifics about our livestock when they were tended if you scan the code with your cellphone.
The original plan was to use it for the business, but I’m just too busy.
Great Idea. And good to see others did the same. I had a community page on facebook that got really popular, so I snagged the URL ahead of time hoping to capitalize. That was four or five years ago and perhaps, it is time.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 seems to work out pretty good as well as stitching in time does.
Do you know what affect this will have on my site..
effect
EL,
Thanks for the help.
If you can’t discern the difference between affect and effect, just use impact and feeling. Really, the reason we use the word tsunami now is that folks couldn’t tell the difference between tides and tidal waves.
I knew a girl from Easton, Maryland who understands both effect and affect. Do you know her family name is Todd.
I wonder what happens when an old neighbor of a Madison meets a Todd in Maryland. Near the Potomac.
I hope you get the good advice you’re looking for. If not, then there’s always this oldie-but-goodie from the MAN himself:
I’m convinced this fucker is a scam artist.
It’s my website not my PC.
Yep, and Yep.
It’s all a ‘scam’. Thank you for finally noticing that fact.
Gotcha… and agree.
Well maggie you would certainly know about scam artists.
HR,
How do you know that is Maggie? As you see in my comment below, I suggested it was Maggie also. How can you tell?
Honestly, didn’t you see her other posts? The rambling, the mumbling, the off topic videos, how could it be anyone else?
Yes, that’s why I suggested below Dr. Death might be Maggie. Oh, I was on another computer so I posted under Anon.
Sir Squirrels, Maggie is an interesting break in the thread, your constant bitching about Maggie is a bore.
Sweety, please take your foot out of your mouth before you type.
Maybe you’ve considered this eventuality and hope for it even. One night the cops will stop you on your way to Tujunga Canyon to drop off some squirrels. Hmm. How to explain that you are illegally dumping squirrels from your locale to another?
What chu doing with the squirrels, mac?
They’re my pets, officer.
I’ve heard of folks with chickens and mice but this is new. Imma run you in.
For what?
You have squirrels in a cage out by a park, you might be a danger to yourself.
After several police interviews and a call to the wife, you enter a holding cell with a deranged looking cellmate.
Well, looky here, ain’t you pretty, what’s your name, white boy?
Rob.
Robbery? I’m up for rape, none of it is true; she was asking for it. I had her in my arms like this.
He takes you in his arms. You struggle. He plants a full throated kiss in your mouth. You close your eyes to block out his ugly face and imagine that you are kissing a walrus. He begins to fumble with your jail issue drawers and you hear yourself pleading timidly, please be gentle.
Does your mom know that you are working for the communist party? Well yes, she probably does. Being as she came over the boarder all those years ago, and still doesn’t have a green card, she probably is happy to give you room in the garage to hammer your thoughts out to the world. And it brings in a little income to support her house cleaning service. You still haven’t told be how I can join in your troll business.
Yes, like assBook, instagrad, wickedpedia and porn hub, you can do without them.
Well, maybe not but do try.
Blacklisted by McAfee? Really? You were watching cartoon porn, weren’t you?
Kidding, kidding. Have not used McAfee in years and do not have a business website. I run a saw and swing a hammer, most of the time, BUT I am considering going back into business again. So, other than that last bit (maybe), I am absolutely no help to you whatsoever.
Sorry. GREAT IDEA though; is always a positive to have available advice/experience/OJT that is neutral and non-biased. Even if it is biased, sometimes. Or not neutral, for that matter. So . . . go get ’em, DB!!
DB – this article might help.
@Donkey Balls
1) You may not be aware but various browsers will make a call to Google as the very first thing they do when they start up. This includes FireFox for example. The call is to a Google site security advisory which Google maintains of potentially harmful sites. If Google says a site is potentially harmful then the browser can warn the user to not visit it.
2) There is a way to tell your browser (Firefox in my case) to not make this call however it does mean you will never be forewarned AND will not know if sites important to you (e.g. your own) are not accidentally blacklisted.
3) How does a site get on that blacklist? This can happen for various reasons ranging from the obvious e.g. you’re a hacker 🙂 to accidental reasons such as your site has access login fields but does not use HTTPS.
4) I suggest you do the following:
4.1) Go to https://www.virustotal.com and scan your site. It will use multiple AV engines to scan your site and report which AV’s think something is wrong. If any think your site is infected then you need to contact them and ask them to remove the false-positive (assuming you have confirmed for yourself that it is a false-positive). Ask me how to request removal from blacklists if you dont know.
4.2 Make sure your site uses HTTPS. If you are not then get a HTTPS certificate and install it. There are various vendors including free ones. If you are not sure then go to https://certifytheweb.com/ which has a program that will handle it all for you.
4.3 Use MalwareBytes (free) and at least one other AV program to scan you server. I suggest a non-free system like EMSISoft.
5) If you are on the Google dangerous websites list you need to get off it by contacting them via their web service (just search for how to get off Google mal site list or similar phrasing). Don’t bother to do this though until you switch to HTTPS which Google (and others) are starting to make a per-requisite for “safe sites”.
PS. The argument about switching to Mac vs Windows is no longer relevant. Both are equally secure (or not secure) for all intents and purposes. And in any case, this is not the issue you have raised. Plus, a warning to all here, using iCloud and similar services from Google, Amazon, etc. is, to me and in my opinion, not a good idea.
a.k.a.,
Thanks, I will certainly go through these steps. I use Firefox when testing the backend of the site. I use Chrome when building out the frontend of the site. I do have https as it was required to get a Stripe account. I noticed the issue right around the same time Joomla is suggesting (strongly) that I upgrade to php 7.1 and right about the same time we changed our upload allowances(?) from 20mb to 500mb (we may have to go even higher and am unaware what unkowns there are). I only get the warnings from McAfee (on my PC) when I download from my site. My site will be doing lots of heavy uploading and downloading.
Any comments from you would be greatly appreciated.
@Donkey
So the problem is to determine why McAfee has labeled the site as malware (or whatever the label). If they don’t tell you specifically why then you need to investigate the issue yourself. There are tools to help, for example:
https://quttera.com/website-malware-scanner
This will scan the site and tell you what security issues it finds.
There are also website reputation services which you can use to find out if the site has been added to any blacklists, for example:
https://www.urlvoid.com/
If you are on a blacklist then you need to contact the blacklist service and ask for clarification and removal of your site.
Many services use these 3rd party blacklists to determine how to handle a site. So one must make sure to not be listed.
I would also check these links:
https://woorkup.com/how-to-check-if-a-domain-is-blacklisted-by-google/
and
https://sucuri.net/guides/how-to-remove-google-blacklist-warning/
Hope this helps.
@Donkey
When your local version of McAfee reports a problem with your site, what is the specific message it gives you? Does it happen as soon as you visit the site or when you try and do something on the site such as download/upload something?
VirusTotal gave a report on 3 of my URLs (frontend, backend and admin) saying “No engines detected this URL.
How is that even possible?
@Donkey
Sorry for asking a possibly stupid question but I assume these URLs are accessible via the internet (as opposed to being only local to your private network or similar setup?). VirusTotal (and the other services) can only analyze internet accessible URLS/servers.
No stupid questions. Yes, it is accessible via internet.
I just got off chat with my hosting service. They are going to do a total server scan to confirm there is no problem. My site only gets scanned periodically by my host. I did not know that. I will probably pay for Sucuri in order to get protection and cleanup down to a file level. This is, from what I understand, a necessity. Especially for a site such as mine. A large part of my site will be used for transferring images by, hopefully, a large number of people. Hopefully 100s of GBs per day. Sucuri is $200/yr and will also protect against corrupted file uploads.
Will report back soon in regards to level 2 Tech support running a total scan on my site.
@WIP
Sucuri is good, especially if you have malicious files or malware needing cleanup. I have ~30 sites, all on WordPress, with most using the free version of Wordfence combined with paid version of Backup Buddy. The others are on Sucuri paid.
I cannot offer better than AKA. But a few recent episodes with Google taught me that what is considered malware or malicious files by Google, and possibly others, is not harmful in any way, it may simply be links or content they do not like.
Google ads will disallow ads if the website of the landing page contains malware or malicious files. Once you’re in this jail its hard to get out.
All my websites use WordPress themes created by one company. They use placeholder code for banner ads where if you choose to show a banner ad you check yes to show and then replace their placeholder code with your own. Since I don’t run any banner ads I don’t bother removing their code, I just check no.
The placeholder code, which includes a link to an image at the theme developers website still showed up in the source code of my website. Google didn’t like this. Once I realized that was the issue I replaced it with my own code. Even though I walked the Google support rep through the source code and demonstrated the offending links no longer exist their sophisticated automated scan tech still says it is.
If your website footer has a link back to the Joomla theme developer or any such links exist elsewhere on the site that might trigger the McAfee warning.
Do F7 search of source code for the name of the theme dev.
Ben Lurken,
Holy cow!! I would never have known that. I just signed up with Sucuri since I do not want this problem to go any further. Sucuri convinced me that they can and will take care of the problem. Yes, I have a theme and it is a new one since I had to redesign my frontend due to the old theme being incompatible with php 7+. Maybe that is the problem. Thanks, I will take that out right now.
Get on board everyone…Business Corner is the bomb!!!!
Lurken,
I wonder if the social media links would cause the same issue. I smell another scam in that the social media links will not ever be an issue.
Siteground found no issues when scanning site with Sucuri. I opened a review ticket with McAfee and am told it will take 3-5 days to review.
@Donkey
Awesome – looks like a false positive and I’m sure McAfee will sort it out. It happens.
a.k.a.,
I meant to say….There are no stupid questions.
Seriously, thanks for all your help. It takes time and effort to help people. I am appreciative of your time. Thank you.
@Donkey,
No problem – I understood it the way you meant it.
Dear Donkey Balls,
I think a Business Corner is a good idea but probably needs a better title. How’s about Wise Ass Corner? Just a tentative swipe at your horse-like visage.
I have noticed increasing anomalies with aspects of a business network. Of course, I am in a remote location and lack secure access, but found an interesting work around.
I purchased a laptop in Maryland and set it up in Maryland as a guest of a friend’s network and it moved to this home here and forgot to change where it thinks it lives.
Now that my son is a software engineer instead of the electrical engineer he’s supposed to be in my version, I have no idea how to make another one act like this computer does out here when the power goes down around us.
Like it did last night.
We lost power for 28 hours and it has been a wake-up call. If your business involves people checking emergency supplies, perhaps it is a good time to find a good way to plug up any leaks of any kind. Of course you can never get them all.
Especially when they sit on top.
I am launching my site soon, but am trying to decide if I should go east or west, just like Bob Seger talked about a long time ago when the world made sense to some of us.
So, a lot depends upon the agricultural issue here and since that river keeps rising, I expect an early launch is better. AS long as the cybersecurity is good. I have to get rid of trackers one way or another before mine launches. I’ve called for some Italian assist.
*That last is secret code for this… if you want to see what something looks like from somewhere else, look at it from there. I want to see what someone from far away through multiple hubs sees so I know what needs cleaning. That is how I look for back doors. And passwords are always the key. You can lead horses to water and still, they won’t drink.
Protect your passwords? Protect your DNA too.
Maggie?
DB, I have a handful of web sites that are hosted by a small no-name host. Every few years I run into blacklist problems, usually email servers bouncing back my email. What I do is open a ticket with my host, who then goes through the procedure of getting their IP address(es) removed from the blacklist. If your host is legit, they will want to make sure their server IP is clean and not on the list.
More detail – Most of the cheaper web hosting out there involves sharing server space with other web sites. Hosts will jockey their clients around and stack as many as they can on a single server to increase profit margins. Yeah, you can pay to have an exclusive use of server, but it’s $$$. So what typically happens is that one of these customers does something nefarious which gets the whole IP/server domain and every other client/web site hosted on that server put on the shitlist. The host then has to remove the violating customer, jump through hoops, etc. to get taken back off the list. You may want to snoop around webhostingtalk to find a different host if yours isn’t supporting you getting off the blacklist.
TC,
Thanks. Yes, I would think hosting services would want to cleanup a blacklist as a part of good service. Why not, it would certainly effect (did I use the right one El Spellio?) their reviews.
I am on a shared server (for now), while I build out my site. Once I get to a predetermined level of business (maybe sooner now that I have run into this issue), I will switch to a private server.
Siteground has good reviews and the hosting package I subscribed to gets me quick and good support. I will listen to recommendations if you have any.