Firefox3 Annoynce: SafeBrowsing
Filed under: Tech
Posted 4 months, 1 week ago at 1:28 am. 3 comments
Firefox just blocked me from visiting Cool OSX Apps, a perfectly legit site.
The two buttons on the screen, neither of them allowed me to bypass the check and go to the site. LAME1.
Apparently Firefox 3 has a built-in safe-browsing feature, which queries the StopBadWare.org DB, and it is turned on by default. LAME2. For some ridiculous reason, Cool OSX Apps is blacklisted. LAME3.
I could not find the option to turn it off in the settings dialog. LAME4. To be fair, I didn’t look hard enough. Who needs a dialog, when there is “about:config”?
Type in “about:config” in the address bar. Search for safebrowsing, set the two bolded entries (see screenshot) to false.
While you are at it, turn off safebrowsing for google toolbar as well.
What makes you think that the site was completely legit. It could have been one of the thousands of WordPress installs that weren’t up to date and got hacked to link to malware. It could have accidentally linked to a Mac program that was a trojan.
In Firefox 3 (already in the builds between Beta 5 and 3 Final) the warning page lets you pass through to the site but keeps a red warning information bar at the top of the screen so you’re reminded that the page you’re visiting is unsafe.
- A
Thank you for the nice post. We are TRYING very hard to get Google and Stopbadware.org to remove the warning on our site.
Stopbadware.org is only a 3 person company with a 10-20 day backlog on REMOVING warning on your site.
Randy Collins
President
Cool OSX Apps.net
@Asa
By legit, I mean Cool OSX Apps itself contains only legal content. You may be right about the WordPress vulnerability, but regardless, it is still a major usability issue. The “Get me out of here” button should not be hard-wired to the FF search page, and there needs to be an easy way to turn the feature off. Nothing is more depressing than reaching the end of the internet. I am glad it has been changed in later builds.
@Randy
You’re welcome.