In this tutorial, I will share how to fix the “This site ahead contains harmful programs” error in WordPress.
Now, it doesn’t matter if you are a beginner in WordPress or an expert; anytime you see an error like this letting you know. That the website you are about to visit could contain a harmful program; it can be scary.
It can be scarier if it is your own website.
So, we need to be able to fix this.
Causes of the Error
Now you might be wondering: how did this happen?
While this is one of those things where Google has marked it as a bad website just because there could be something on there; it could be that your website was hacked and there is some virus or Trojan or something like that going on the other end, or it could be that you have a sort of ad network that had some suspicious code that Google thought it could be dangerous for your visitors.
So, they let your visitors know that they can go back to safety because your website could be harmful. But again, we need to fix this because this could be detrimental to your blog and your website.
Before we get started, it is important to have a backup of your harmful website. And this can include your website, your harmful website server, databases, and things like that. Now, of course, a backup might seem very technical, but it’s actually straightforward using a great plugin. If you go to MyThemeShop.com, go to plugins.
We actually have two plugins that you can choose from: the My WP Backup and the My WP Backup Pro. Both of these are super easy to use. They make a great backup of your server, and if you ever need a backup of your website, you always have one ready.
- Use Google Safe Browsing Tool to determine if your Website is affected
First off, we will use a simple test to make sure our website is affected by something. So we are just going to go to the Google safe browsing tool, and we are just going to plug in our website to see if our website is really hacked.
And so basically, we are just going to add in our URL here, and we are going to click search, and it will let us know if our website really is unsafe or if it was just a mistake. Now, if our website comes back with the file and whatever is going on, we know what to fix.
And then if our website comes back as everything is fine, it could simply be that it was a mistake. Which means we need to file a report with Google that our website was just simply a mistake and if they could please remove the error.
To report this, we are going to go to the forum, and we will report incorrect Phishing warnings. We will add our URL, add a comment if you would like (of what happened or what you saw), and then send it. This should take care of the issue for you. But now, if you did come up with a program issue where the website really was hack or there is some issue with your ad content or things like that, obviously, you need to be able to fix it.
- Manually Remove Corrupted Plugin, Theme, or File
So if it is something on the backend, you might have to go in, remove that plugin, remove that theme, remove something you added or look for the affected file.
Once you delete them, you are certain that your website is excellent. Now it’s time to ask Google to remove the warning. Log in to your Google Webmaster tools, go to security issues, and then check the box letting Google know that you have fixed the errors and warnings they let you know about. Now Google should re-crawl your website and verify that you took care of the problems, and now your website should be back to normal.
- Install Wordfence Security Plugin
Now, after you have fixed your problem, or luckily if you have never experienced this problem. It is good always to have a recommended security program active on your website. Now we recommend using Wordfence. To do this, go to your plugins, add new, and then look for Wordfence or type in security.
Wordfence has over one million downloads. And that’s the reason why it’s an amazing plugin and is there to keep your websites safe. It will let you know if there are issues to prevent them, so you do not get errors like this.
It is definitely worth your time to use a plugin like this so you don’t have issues like these in the future.
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