How to Report Malicious Sites in Firefox

Mozilla Firefox uses an online service from Google called Google Safe Browsing to flag malicious and deceptive websites. For example, if you visit a phishing website in Firefox, then you will see a warning page telling you that the website you are trying to visit is harmful. You have the options to bypass this warning or go back to the previous web pages. If you have visited a harmful or malicious website and Firefox does not show any warning, then you can report this website to be deceptive.

Just by reporting a website does not automatically put it in the black list of the Google Safe Browsing service. Google actually examines the reported websites or URLs for harmful content using their special algorithms. Only and only if harmful content is found, the reported website is reported to be malicious. Furthermore, the status of the website will change again when the next time Google examines it and finds it clean.

Anyway, here is how you can report a deceptive website in Mozilla Firefox:

  1. Click on the hamburger icon (it looks like three horizontal lines) to open the menu.Firefox Report Deceptive Sites
  2. From the menu, select Open Help icon to open another menu.
  3. From the Help menu, select Report deceptive site.Firefox Report Deceptive Sites
  4. A new webpage will be opened. Here you can enter the URL of the deceptive website. You can also add comments of your own. And then click on the Submit Report button.Firefox Report Deceptive Sites

Google will analyze the website for any deceptive behavior. If they find any such behavior, then it will be added to the list of deceptive sites. But the site will be checked again and again periodically in the future. And when the website is found no longer deceptive, the warning shall be removed.

You can learn more about Google Safe Browsing by visiting https://safebrowsing.google.com/.

3 comments

  1. This seems to be pretty useless. I already reported to Google four
    deceptive websites that redirect to porn sites. It’s been over two
    weeks, and they did absolutely nothing. There has to be a better way.

    1. I think they probably won’t waste time unless it is actually malicious like a malware hosting or phishing website. A redirect is not necessarily malicious unless the host website is infected. If the host website is infected with a malicious redirect, you should report this to the maintainer of the website to have the issue resolved. I’m trying to reply to Brian.

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