Last week I was horrified to find that both Google and Firefox had blocked this website to its users. The security measure did not affect users of Firefox 2, but new users of Firefox 3. If someone was using Firefox 3 they were presented with a worrying red and black screen saying “Reported Attack Site” – see screenshot below. Clicking through to the details to try and find what was happening it listed a rogue website “sum4count” as being on the domain. I was totally perplexed by this as I do not knowingly host malicious software or links. I decided to backup my posts and delete my wordpress installation and reinstall it, just in case there was anything on the server. I also took a quick look at the source of my index page and lo and behold there was a link in one of my posts to a sum4count website. I have no idea how it got there, but I deleted it and sent the site in for a second review.

This is the screen that Firefox 3 users would have seen.

If searching for Sprites and Bites on Google you would have been met with a link to my site and another link to say “this website may harm your computer”. Clicking on my link would have taken you to another google site blocking you out.
So the review I submitted had cleared my website and declared it safe, yet the tag of unsafe website was still attached to my domain. Yesterday I decided to delete every single post on Sprites and start afresh. All of the old has gone so now they can have no reason to think that any of my posts are dodgy. Today the block has finally been lifted and my domain is no longer tagged as being unsafe – not that it was unsafe in the first place. As reported by Google themselves, there was never any malicious software on this blog, there was never even a risk just by visiting the blog, it was purely a link to another website which may have harmed your PC. And I still do not know how it got there.

I hate Google and Firefox for doing this to my blog. But I cannot help but think they actually did me a favour – after all, had this not happened, the blog would have been the same old posts clogging up the worldwide web with no great purpose. I feel a resurgence coming on – Sprites and Bites MK II