"Malicious or Unwanted Software" Violation - Google AdSense - Display Ads forum at WebmasterWorld - WebmasterWorld

Forum Moderators: martinibuster

Message Too Old, No Replies

"Malicious or Unwanted Software" Violation

CommandDork

5:39 pm on Mar 10, 2023 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

Top Contributors Of The Month

Just today I received a "Malicious or Unwanted Software" violation report from Adsense on only one page of one particular site of mine (and therefore the page has the "Disabled Ad Serving" label attached to it).

Interesting in that there appears absolutely nothing wrong with the page itself, the code therein, or apparently even the ad serving from a user POV. The page is wholly static (no DB connection, nothing 'reaching out' for data - save for the ads themselves). The page timestamp on the server side hasn't been changed since last year. Logs look clean.

My only guess is that it's a false positive being reported? I cannot request a manual review as the option is greyed out yet it's labeled as a "Must Fix" violation.

Could it be one of Adsense's own ads attempted to deliver software to users through my site and therefore a flag was tripped?

Just found it interesting as I've never had an issue like this come up ever before on any of my sites, ever. The site's not new either, it gets veteran traffic. There are no downloadables from my end, all information is served statically (images, text). It's not Wordpress or any other CMS.

Any ideas?

Milanex

6:30 pm on Mar 11, 2023 (gmt 0)

Top Contributors Of The Month

Hello,

may be some Content can trigger this. See here:

[support.google.com...]

Milanex

tangor

12:38 am on Mar 12, 2023 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

Top Contributors Of The Month

With the rush by g to include AI in all of their products, could this be an example of AI gone wonkers?

SPECULATION, not a determination!

A number of reports of oddities are beginning to surface here, there, and everywhere which make no SENSE in the traditional aspects we've known since year zero...

tangor

3:44 am on Mar 14, 2023 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

Top Contributors Of The Month

G's policy is "we are always right, even when we are wrong"... Since this is a ONE PAGE/DOCUMENT notice, might just wait it out and see what happens. Oftimes we move in panic and just make things worse.

Hang in there!

CommandDork

6:21 pm on Mar 14, 2023 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

Top Contributors Of The Month

If anyone from the future comes across this thread to see the exciting conclusion...

A) I commend you for making it this far and...

B) Seems the violation disappeared as mysteriously as it appeared.

Contacted Adsense on Friday afternoon, heard back on Sunday night but it was them essentially regurgitating their policies concerning malware and then suggesting I contact the ad section people of Adsense from there. By the time this had all played out, the violation had been removed (and has been gone since).

So either it was a false positive, a violation triggered by one of Adsense's own ads on my site/page (my guess), or Google AI got smart and cleared it itself - while then moving on to learn Jiu-jitsu and fly a helicopter.

Either way, it's gone now with no real action on my part. Go figure.

Octothorpe

8:06 pm on Mar 17, 2023 (gmt 0)

@CommandDork, I'm happy to see that the issue has resolved itself for you. This comment is also somewhat for anyone from the future who comes across this thread.

I and at least a few other people I have talked to on another forum site have experienced this same issue.

For me, it started in early February, and at first, all of the URLs Adsense was reporting the issue on had "?fr=operanews" added to the end.

When I visit the pages with or without the "/?fr=operanews" added to the end, the pages appear to have no issues. I am using WordPress and have scanned with Wordfence, a malware scanner included with my hosting, as well as online scanners and they show no issues. Google Search Console also doesn't show any security issues.

Ads are also still showing on these pages as well as the rest of the site.

It seems that about 2 to 3 new pages appear with the warning per day, and the same number of pages reported in the Policy center also go away per day.

False positives? Google bug?

tangor

8:57 pm on Mar 17, 2023 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

Top Contributors Of The Month

@Octothorpe ... Welcome to Webmasterworld!

Observations of g in the wild are always greatly appreciated!

Hopefully this is the AI part of the algo learning from mistakes and we'll see fewer as the weeks and months proceed.

CommandDork

1:18 pm on Mar 21, 2023 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

Top Contributors Of The Month

So, again Sunday morning - same site, same policy violation, but now on a different page.

And, again, the violation is gone within 48 hours.

tangor

6:48 am on Mar 22, 2023 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

Top Contributors Of The Month

Heh ... might call this the "Yo-yo Effect" ... or perhaps another g method of reducing site income?

Tin foil hat firmly in place.

Or not.

Seppone

11:46 am on Mar 22, 2023 (gmt 0)

I had this issue, too, and discussed it with adsense support: It's just falsely detected and you have to wait until the violation is gone.
But it feels indeed a bit uneasy since it's a "must fix" and google asks you to "request a review" but you cannot since the button is greyed out for this type of violation (another google bug...).

CommandDork

11:58 am on Mar 23, 2023 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

Top Contributors Of The Month

I can concur that, after having heard back from Ad Support (not to be confused with Adsense support), they more or less said it was a nefarious actor submitting malicious code via an ad in the Adsense system.

It's like the famous break-up line: "It's not you, it's me".

So rest easy, Future Dweller, you did nothing wrong.