The Dreaded Facebook Malicious Link Warning

Facebook will occasionally decide to flag links to your website with a warning about malware, spam or other supposed problems when it is simply not true. On two occasions, for two separate websites I run, Facebook has flagged my links this way. In the first instance, I submitted a form through Facebook’s site and they responded in a few days with some standard jargon stating they could not address the issue. Luckily, the problem disappeared a few days later without any further action on my part.

Obviously, this is a major traffic killer from Facebook and you need to eliminate this warning as soon as possible. The first thing to do is scan your site for actual problems using a site such as Sucuri’s free website malware scanner. If anything comes up as “high risk” or any malware is actually found, you’ll need to address the issue. In my case, nothing was found except a “medium risk” warning that a website firewall was not found. Note that Sucuri  sells this firewall service, so I’m sure that’s a sales nudge in their direction.

The second thing to do is follow the instructions from author Carol Tice at Forbes in her article “When Facebook Calls You Abusive: How I Reclaimed My Reputation“. Basically, the article instructs the reader to visit Trend Micro’s Site Safety Center and request a review of the website Facebook is complaining about. According to the article, Facebook partners with Trend Micro and others to determine which sites are safe and which sites are not.  The review process is rather slow by internet standards (multiple days or longer) and is mainly a waiting game on your part.

As I continue to find more information on this problem, I’ll update this article. In the meantime, I’d love to hear any feedback from others who have resolved this problem — please leave appropriate comments below.