In this tutorial, I will be sharing with you 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 sort of 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 sort of 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 be able to fix this because this could be detrimental to your blog and to your website.
Now before we get started; it is important to always have a backup of your website. And this can include your website, your website server, databases and things like that. Now, of course, a backup might seem very technical, but it’s actually very simple using a great plugin. If you go to MyThemeShop.com; go to plugins.
We actually have two plugins that you can choose from; there is 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 are going to 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, then we know what to fix.
And then if our website comes back as everything is fine; then 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 just going to go to the forum, and we are going to report incorrect Phishing warning. We are just going to add our URL, maybe 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 hacked or there is some sort of 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 simply go in, remove that plugin, remove that theme, remove something that you added or look for the file that is affected.
Once you delete them, you are certain that your website is completely fine. Now it’s time to ask Google to remove the warning. Simply login to your Google Webmaster tools and go to security issues and then simply check the box letting Google know that you have fixed the errors and the warnings they let you know about and 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 to always have a recommended security program active on your website. Now we recommend using Wordfence. To do this; simply 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 so that you can prevent them from happening, 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.
