Bug in Firefox causing intermittent Malware warnings

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Switches things on and off again
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On Christmas eve, Google alerted us to a problem on the site that allowed malicious code to be inserted into some pages. This caused browsers that use Google's Malware database to include diyAudio in their list of flagged websites. We fixed the problem in short order and within 24 hours diyAudio was removed from the Google / StopBadWare Malware warning system.

Since then, some Firefox users have been continuing to see sometimes warnings despite our removal from the database and our clean bill of website health. The reason for this is that there is a bug in the current version of Firefox that stops its internal database of website warnings being updated with removals from the database. This bug is described and discussed in detail here on the Mozilla developers bug database.

If you are experiencing this problem, first ensure that the warnings do not exist in another browser, like Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, or Safari. If they do not exist, you know this is a bug in your Firefox 17.0.1 (or earlier).

To resolve the problem, you can perform one of the following three options:

  1. Confirmed fix: Back up your bookmarks, and then delete your Firefox profile. On Windows 7 (at least), you can find your profile directory by typing "about:cache" into your URL bar. You may need to enable the ability for windows to see hidden files and folders. Note the location of your profile directory, shut down Firefox, then delete the entire profile. Restart your computer and the problem will be fixed.
  2. Confirmed fix: Upgrade to Firefox 18. It will be officially released on January 8 but the current beta version should be acceptable for general use. You can download the latest version from: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/beta/
  3. Unconfirmed fix: Reduce the setting "urlclassifier.confirm-age" to 0 in about:config. This should consider cached results to be considered invalid immediately. Type "about:config" in your URL location bar and adjust the setting from there.

Please let us know how you go with any of the above solutions in the Firefox warning discussion thread.

As some general advice, if in the future you see Malware warnings on any website on the internet, we suggest that you listen to the warning and do not proceed. It's better to be safe than sorry. If you ever see such a warning on diyAudio in the future, that advice remains the same - come back in a few hours and see if we've resolved the problem.

Most typically these days, we are getting flagged because members have directly linked images from other sites that have been compromised into their posts, and this is resulting in us getting flagged. Wherever possible, please upload images directly to diyAudio to avoid this problem, as well as the general problem of link rot.

As far as browsers go, we recommend Google Chrome as the most secure browser to use while surfing the internet. It has the most advanced security of any major browser.

We apologize for any inconvenience this matter may have caused you.
 
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