Are you receiving an error message saying “This site contains harmful programs” on your WordPress website?
How does it relate to you? What impact will it have on your website and business? What serious consequences can you expect?
In this article, I’ll answer all these questions and explain to you how to fix the site ahead contains harmful programs errors in WordPress.
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In most cases, this error means your website has been hacked by bots, causing Google to list it as insecure. If search engines such as Google and Mozilla Firefox detect malware on your site, they flag it and display a warning to make sure that users are not able to access it.
The warning can also occur if you are showing ads from low-quality advertising networks: sometimes, these networks display links to websites spreading malicious code.
So in the end, this warning is displayed to protect and prevent users from spreading malware.
This can result in a domino effect. The traffic to your website will decrease if visitors cannot access it. Rankings will drop, which will affect your revenue collection. To top it off, if your website is hacked, your hosting provider might suspend your account until it’s fixed. Etc, etc.
Hopefully, by acting quickly, you can save all of this from happening.
Important: before troubleshooting the harmful programs warning, please make sure to backup your WordPress website.
Here are the steps you need to take to get the warning removed:
You should start by scanning your WordPress site to detect any malware. Then you can go ahead and clean it.
There are two ways to proceed: by hand or by using a plugin.
Using the manual method is time-consuming. There is a technical aspect to it, and above all, it is not very effective when it comes to cleaning your site. Indeed, since hackers hide their malware, it is hard to detect manually.
That’s why WordPress security plugins are recommended for scanning and cleaning your website.
The three following tools can be used to conduct a web-based scan of your WordPress site for potentially malicious code:
Identify and remove the malware.
On top of that, I’d recommend you to use a comprehensive monitoring solution like WP Umbrella to be alerted instantly if anything goes wrong with your WordPress website. WP Umbrella not only monitors uptime and performance but also PHP errors – and theme and plugins generate a ton of them, potentially jeopardizing your website.
Knowing how hackers gained access to your WordPress website is important to prevent it from happening again. Here are the top web vulnerabilities that hackers used to penetrate a WordPress website.
It is common for WordPress websites to have a number of themes and plugins installed. What if I told you that themes and plugins can develop vulnerabilities over time?
When a plugin or theme installed on your website is vulnerable, the site becomes vulnerable as well.
If a vulnerability is discovered, software developers quickly patch it and release an updated version. By updating to the new version, this vulnerability will be fixed.
So it’s important to keep your plugin up to date and monitor the PHP errors they generate with WP Umbrella.
You can be tricked by hackers by opening a malicious link through an email with a link or a fake advertisement that seems authentic.
Clicking the link will take you to a malicious web page. They are coded in such a way that simply visiting the site can infect your browser. The attackers then steal your login credentials using a method known as cookie stealing.
Make sure you haven’t visited any suspicious sites in your browser history, and clear your browser’s cache and cookies.
Though it doesn’t happen often, we need to keep in mind that it’s a possibility. You may risk infecting your WordPress website if you use an infected computer or device to access it.
Hackers infect computers by injecting their malware into numerous files. Now, if you upload one of those documents to your website, the hacker will be able to compromise it.
Ensure your device or computer has an antivirus program to make sure that your device is clean of any malware infection.
In order to guess websites’ usernames and passwords, hackers use a technique known as brute force. Bots are programmed to make thousands of login attempts within seconds.
When you or any of your WordPress users set passwords like ‘admin’ and ‘password123’, hackers can guess them very easily.
You should always remind your website’s users to use a unique and strong password.
You can take a variety of measures to secure your website according to WordPress’s recommendations. The hardening measures should be implemented before the site review begins.
Once your website has been thoroughly checked for malicious software, you can ask Google to remove this warning from search results.
The only way to do that is through Google’s Webmaster tools.
In webmaster tools, click on the security issues link. A list of any security issues found by Google will appear on this page. Links to cleaning up resources will also be available to you.
You should submit the following form if you do not find any security issues in Google Webmaster tools.
If you have solved the issues, click the checkbox and ask for a review.
In closing, I would like to emphasize two important measures you should implement on your WordPress site. Taking these steps will help you to effectively prevent hack attacks and recover from them more easily.
I hope you found this article helpful in fixing this site ahead contains harmful programs error!
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