e621 has suddenly gotten a red rating on McAfee SiteAdvisor, a widely-used internet service that reports on the safety of web sites by crawling the web and testing the sites it finds for malware and spam.

There's an area for users and, more importantly, web site owners to leave comments and ratings. ("We quickly review all site owner concerns and promptly correct mistakes.")

http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/e621.net

yeah, I saw the rating this morning and said something in the chat about it. was thoroughly confused though. e621 has always been safe.

norton ftw :D

That czech penis ad will make anyone feel unsafe

Site's like SiteAdvisor blow. They have bots that trawl the web and use really shitty heuristics to try and work out if someone is 'safe' or not.

And there's no way to appeal their rating or anything.

Arcturus said:
And there's no way to appeal their rating or anything.

It says on the page:
"Website owner comments allows owners of analyzed websites to comment on our opinions. Owners are free to comment, disagree or clarify. These comments are posted unedited. We quickly review all site owner concerns and promptly correct mistakes. We don't allow sites to pay to be rated or to change or improve their ratings. Site owners who wish to communicate with McAfee should start by visiting our Webmaster page." (http://user.siteadvisor.com/forums/websiteOwnerVerification.php)

Wtf, "found potential security risks", but all the "badness" descriptors are empty. Did someone at McAfee just not like furries and rate it red for the hell of it?

im trying to put in a good word about the site, but its not letting me post a comment. im logged in, but at the bottom where i assume a comment box would be, it has a log in field, but i KNOW im logged in cuz i went there from another page where i was logged in to make sure...so yeah, any one got tips for me? :P

This flash could be the culprit?

http://e621.net/post/show/66059

Because that red rating wasn't there until after this flash was posted. Anyone with Avira will get a popup "FlashFrame" virus message from it (the virus is harmless by the way).
Read my comment on that post and you'll see more info on what I mean.
That file must have come up when McAffee did it's regular trawling, and that's why the site got flagged as "dangerous"(???)

Odd, nothing's changed in the last while, so I don't know why it would be reporting us as a risk. I want to stress there's nothing on this site that would be dangerous to our users - the worst problem we've ever had was a banner ad shooting up a popup at one point, which we got rid of almost immediately, and that was quite a while ago. Just to be safe, I removed that flash that was generating the warning. Hopefully that will fix the issue.

norton site adviser says its safe. but it also says teletype.com is unsafe with 85 drive-by downloads and 3 viruses while mcafee says its safe ?_?

luvdaporn said:
norton site adviser says its safe. but it also says teletype.com is unsafe with 85 drive-by downloads and 3 viruses while mcafee says its safe ?_?

They're all fucked...can't trust any antivirus program now-a-days.... :-(

I have great anti-virus software, it's called Linux.

Fuck yeah http://xkcd.com/272/

shame that the features stop there

Jazz said:
Fuck yeah http://xkcd.com/272/

It's funny because it's true.

i tried linux for about a month, i hated having to switch back to windows to use my games and other stuff, but if i didnt' have so much good shit depending on windows, i would have switched to linux, quit the resource lenient os

linux isn't virus-proof, its just that hackers make viruses for windows because the vast amount of users

luvdaporn said:
linux isn't virus-proof, its just that hackers make viruses for windows because the vast amount of users

Shhhh, linux users don't like that logic stuff.

FurZ said:
Shhhh, linux users don't like that logic stuff.

Shhhh, windows users like to ignore that it doesn't make a practical difference.

Marbles said:
Shhhh, windows users like to ignore that it doesn't make a practical difference.

linux and mac do have more security against viruses in the os, (linux more than mac) but how many users does effect which a hacker would make a virus for. viruses have already been made for linux and mac, just not as much as windows. in my opinion, the compatibility with programs windows has makes up for the lack of security features linux has. besides, i never had a virus i couldn't get rid of without buying new equipment

luvdaporn said:
besides, i never had a virus i couldn't get rid of without buying new equipment

Obviously never owned a Zip Drive. :P Hardware viruses for teh fail!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death

luvdaporn said:
linux isn't virus-proof, its just that hackers make viruses for windows because the vast amount of users

Well, this is not so simple as you think, but, yeah, you're right in case of desktop-oriented malware. I could write something about embedded systems and access policy and stuff but I consider writing about it here as bad as posting gideon porn

pretty simple not to get a virus though: don't download stupid crap mostly. for example i once was about to download a movie. it said it was 57 kb ?_? so i just deleted it (no it wasn't a torrent.) also like i said before: norton 360 4.0 ftw =D

Well, that and don't visit a variety of major sites (Amazon, eBay, CNN, etc) that rely on large advertisement firms for their ads, as sometimes people slip drive-bys that attack day-0 vulnerabilities into those ads.

And don't trust any SSL connection nowadays thanks to that null-termination bug that was discovered that allows anyone to fake an SSL certificate for any website.

Don't even open certain emails which contain specially formatted messages to attack either your mail client or the browser you're checking email with.

And make sure you're behind a properly configured router/firewall... one which can't be easily identified in case its firmware has a security vulnerability.

And don't run any unnecessary services on your PC since they could have security vulnerabilities.

And... ah hell, in the end, the only way to be sure is to unplug the network cable from the back of the computer.

What if the person uses USB connection?

Kitsu~ said:
I have great anti-virus software, it's called Linux.

If thats the case, than the best virus protection is not using a computer...

<em>Sorry to bump this old thread, but I have to say that maybe the advertisements that people keep experiencing are doing "drive-bys" and that is what is probably causing McAffee to spazz out about this website?</em>