Reported Web Forgery$#@!
This morning, when browsing through one of my web sites with FireFox, I noticed that one of the pages came back with the following, ominous error.
Reported web forgery notice in Firefox
Needless to say, I was little concerned 
I did some research online and was surprised not to find a lot of information about how Firefox determines if a web site is a phishing or malware site. I did find some complaints about being certain web sites being mislabeled and references to Firefox using Google Safe Browsing and perhaps McAfee’s SiteAdvisor service as blacklists. It’s not at all clear from this page from Firefox how a site owner or webmaster can appeal being blacklisted.
I submitted an Incorrect Forgery Alert with Google Safe Browsing. We’ll see if that does the trick. I’ll update the situation if anything changes.
The same thing happened to our companies website today as well, a microsite of the domain. Also reported to have it removed, I think there is something wrong with their system… seems that there have been more of these problems in the past weeks.
Andre – Thanks for the comment. I agree 100% with you — I think something is definitely wrong with whatever systems or lists that Firefox is using. The frustrating part for me is that Mozilla/Firefox doesn’t tell you how to fix it!
I have been victimized by the Anti-Phishing Working Group, Google and Tucows.
I had an online educational magazine for those in the screenprinting industry. It has been around since 1983 and has subscribers from around the world. It is highly respected as it contains no advertising what so ever – only relevant educational content.
Recently, while moving the site to another server, I had to rebuild my databases, as the magazine is ran on a Joomla database. While the magazine was down and completely out of service, a block was placed on the site. This should have been impossible, since there is nothing on the site that could possibly be considered malware, phishing or anything else. There was nothing there as the database ceased working when we switched servers.
There is a serious flaw in allowing anyone, including discontent competitors, to report a site as a phishing site and cause an interruption of a perfectly legal business entity. I contacted my web hosting company, IX Web Hosting, which explained that they could do nothing as they are a reseller through Tucows. I contacted Tucows and they stated that it was Google who does the actual blocking. I tried contacting Google and in fact filled out the online form to have the block removed, but nothing has happened.
I have been in touch with the Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section, Criminal Division U.S. Department of Justice who stated that they are taking a very serious look at this as they have had a great number of complaints by other legally operated sites that have suffered from the blocks. I have also contacted the Federal Trade Commission who is taking an interest, also from a large number of complaints.
This is a form of business interruption, which is illegal in the United States. There are case laws that address the situation and I suppose it will take a block on a site owned by Dell, IBM, or other large companies with the money and the lawyers to bring the case to court. I would imagine that who ever is behind the blocking will no doubt be slapped with some pretty hefty fines from the government and will likely be sued in a civil court for considerable sums of money for shutting down just one business of the likes of Dell for even one day.
Same thing happened to me.
Now same thing happen with my website to
I have a tech forum http://gstek.info/forum/index.php
Dedicated to technical things, it has nothing to do with
scams, apm or any sort of forgery but …
I think google should enhance its SB in detecting
real forgery or dogy done by any other…
I too have been victimized by this. It seems to me to be a very poorly thought out scheme. Enemies, detractors and competition can use this forgery reporting mechanism to implement a DoS. Since FireFox started coughing up this error to frequent users of the site in question, I have been filing the “this is NOT a phishing site” form at Google to no avail. This has cause me much time and effort to recode around. I have even contacted an attorney about this and he has urged me to file a complaint against Google. I’m not a suer; however, if they are going to allow this mechanism to be abused then, perhaps, it is time to give them a legal lesson.
Does anyone know HOW to successfull get a site removed? It seems that it is quite a simple process to get on the list and a nearly impossible task to get off.
Hi there,
I’ve also had the same thing happen to one of my sites, which is a URL redirection site like numerous other like twitter users.
I did fill in the form for Google to recheck it 2 weeks ago, but no joy so far.
HOW TO FIX THAT ERROR?? PLSS I NEED YOUR HELP… THANKS..
I would highly suggest looking at this post from the Google Online Security Blog. It lists a couple of best practices for verifying and cleaning up a web site that’s been labeled as a web forgery or as malware. Hope this helps!