McAfee banner "We tested this page and blocked content...." even on community.mcafee.com

[annalee]

Suddenly this morning I am seeing a banner I don't recall seeing before. It is at the top of the page and has the McAfee logo and name on the left, then the stop circle (circle with line across), then "We tested this page and blocked content that comes from potentially dangerous or suspicious sites. Allow this content only if your're sure it comes from safe sites.", a text box with "View all blocked content" and finally the "x" for closing the banner. I am using Windows XP and McAfee Anti Virus Plus and have made no recent changes in settings for either. RIght now I am looking at the banner as it appears even on this page. It is not associated with https but, when it occurs with it, I receive a popup window entitled Security Warning asking what I want to do. This is just the Windows security popup, I think. But the banner occurs on other sites (e.g. counterpunch.org. I ignored it at first because it is feasible for ordinary sites to occasionally have questionable content. But this community that is run by McAfee?

Do I have a problem or a bad setting?

[joeblow]

I am getting red rated warnings for many blog sites from McAfee Site Advisor : "Warning we tested this site and found its dangerous to visit" This is unusual and appears to be a problem with McAfee although I am not 100% sure.

[Hayton]

@annalee : I've seen that black banner before, on sites which include 3rd-party content. The problem you see appears to have started very recently - the first notice of it by a poster was by jmckee HERE yesterday. We've been discussing it privately for the past 24 hours and haven't got to the bottom of it yet. It's possible that one of the external sites providing webpage content has introduced something that they shouldn't use, or that their site has been flagged as suspect for some reason. Until we can find out which site that is, we're in the dark too.

@joeblow : blog sites are often created using Wordpress or Joomla. Both of those have had major security weaknesses exposed recently which have been exploited by hackers. If you come across another one, can you post a message to the SiteAdvisor section with the URL and I'll look into it.

One thing to note : I only see the banner on IE. In Chrome I sometimes see the symbol which indicates a plug-in has been blocked. In Chrome and Firefox I have Abine's DoNotTrack+, but I couldn't get that to work in IE. That might be significant.

[joeblow]

I have experienced the above issue using Firefox. Am I to understand the SiteAdvisor warning is connected to the blog sites being created using Wordpress or Joomla? That would mean many sites will be considered dangerous. Is there a way to verify URLs?

[annalee]

Thanks, Hayton. Could you do me a favor and let us know when you figure it out especially if we need to do something on our computers? And, yes, I am using IE 8.

[Hayton]

@joeblow :

If what you are seeing is the big blocking page put up by SiteAdvisor that's a different issue from the one the first poster was asking about. SiteAdvisor uses TrustedSource, which can detect problems almost in real-time. The black banner says content on the page from a 3rd-party (advertiser, whatever) is not to be trusted.

As for the blog sites : not all sites created with WordPress or Joomla will have a problem. Most problems were on WordPress anyway, on sites that hadn't been updated to the latest version. Sites running an older version of WordPress have a security weakness which is still being targeted.

There are many tools available to test websites, but you can generally rely on the visual clues provided by SiteAdvisor and WOT. If either shows a Red status, it should be investigated.

Message was edited by: Hayton - correcting a messed-up edit - on 27/05/12 16:26:35 IST

[pianoboy]

I had the same problem in firefox 12 but not in ie9. By deleteing all the cookies in firefox the problem disapeared.

Suggest you try the same in ie8.

[carmelam]

I first saw the black box with the McAfee banner "We tested this page . . . " when going to my Google Blogger page on my laptop via Firefox. I also get it on my desktop computer using Google Chrome, and as others have said, it even appears at the top of the pages in this forum. I would think there's no dangerous content on this site, is there?

[Hayton]

@carmelam : it's not a site problem, it's something to do with external content from (we're pretty sure) AddThis.

@pianoboy : already tried that. The banner goes away but comes back if the page is reloaded. It's tracking software doing something that it shouldn't. SiteAdvisor hasn't been updated, so it's a change in someone else's program causing this.

Message was edited by: Hayton on 28/05/12 15:18:56 IST

[ajacobs]

Apologies for this warning. Rest assured we're investigating this issue and will resolve asap. Unfortuantely today is a holiday in the US so please bear with us. Thanks,