Some users of my site receive a warning message from Malwarebytes that the site risky and they should not proceed.
I reached out to Malwarebytes asking them to stop blocking my site. They responded that they are not blocking my site, but rather blocking the IP address where my site is hosted. I see the distinction, but the effect is the same thing.
They suggested that I ask InfinityFree to change my IP address.
What can be done?
Is it possible to change the IP address? If so what happens when some new site is begun and it begins to cause problems?
I realize that users can disregard the Malwarebyte warning, but some of these folks take the warning seriously and are fearful that disregarding it will cause great harm.
This is a fairly common issue with free/shared hosting providers. In many cases, Malwarebytes, Bitdefender, Avast, Norton, and other security vendors don’t necessarily block your website itself—they block the server IP when multiple websites share the same IP address and one or more of those sites are detected distributing malware, phishing content, or other malicious activity.
Since InfinityFree uses shared hosting, hundreds or even thousands of websites may be hosted on the same IP. If another website on that shared IP is compromised or abused, security vendors may temporarily blacklist the entire IP to protect their users. Unfortunately, legitimate websites hosted on that same IP can also be affected.
Quite simply, Malwarebytes can unblock the IP. Their argument makes no sense.
In theory, you can create a new “hosting account” within your main client area account, and hope it links to a different hosting IP. but theirs no guarantees.
You could also potentially connect your domain to cloudflare since you’re using a custom domain, that might work.
I am not familiar with CloudFlare. I can search for it but if you could point me in the direction of what it is I would be seeking would be appreciated.
We can’t change your nameservers from our side. You’ll need to log in to the platform where you purchased your domain (your domain registrar) and update the nameservers there.
Once you’ve changed the nameservers to Cloudflare’s, Cloudflare will begin managing your DNS. From there, you can proxy your traffic through Cloudflare, which may help by serving your website through Cloudflare’s network instead of directly exposing your hosting server’s IP. However, if the origin server’s IP itself has a poor reputation, you’ll still need to work with your hosting provider or the relevant security vendors to resolve that issue.
Thanks to all that provided help. I setup a Cloudflare account and followed instructions and my site is now working without the warning notices from Malwarebytes.