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Firefox is warning of dangerous and deceptive content on one system, but not another

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Using Firefox on one system, it pops up the "dangerous and deceptive content" message on sites that are fine, like mine and a friend's, but on my other system, no warnings for the same sites. It doesn't do it for google.com or msn.com, and no one else gets the warning for the sames sites I am.

Other than turning off the security setting, is there a way to fix this problem? It wants to block me on many sites I've been going to for years.

Using Firefox on one system, it pops up the "dangerous and deceptive content" message on sites that are fine, like mine and a friend's, but on my other system, no warnings for the same sites. It doesn't do it for google.com or msn.com, and no one else gets the warning for the sames sites I am. Other than turning off the security setting, is there a way to fix this problem? It wants to block me on many sites I've been going to for years.

Chosen solution

Well, something changed, because the problem seems to have gone away. Not sure what happened, but the browser is working normally again.

Thank you for your attention!

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All Replies (6)

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Is that the red page described in this article: How does built-in Phishing and Malware Protection work?

Can you tell whether your requests are getting redirected to unexpected URLs?

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Yes, it is.

As far as I can tell, no, it's not redirecting the page request.

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That's strange. Firefox regularly downloads fresh lists of bad URLs, so a difference might be explained by one Firefox being more up-to-date than another. It's also possible that the file got corrupted somehow.

For now, you can click the link to continue to the page, but you might also look up any addresses that handle sensitive information on Google's SafeBrowsing search page to see why it's on the list, or whether it's been removed from the live list:

https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search

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That's just it, the sites aren't on the list. Firefox is giving false negatives.

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Chosen Solution

Well, something changed, because the problem seems to have gone away. Not sure what happened, but the browser is working normally again.

Thank you for your attention!

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To try to update the lists more promptly, could you try this:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste safeb*time and pause while the list is filtered

Your Firefox may not list all of the same preferences as mine; these are the ones I see:

(3) Use the "trash can" icon at the right end of the following rows to clear these time stamps:

  • browser.safebrowsing.provider.google4.lastupdatetime
  • browser.safebrowsing.provider.google4.nextupdatetime
  • browser.safebrowsing.provider.mozilla.lastupdatetime

(4) Click the "reset" arrow button at the right end of the following row to clear the time stamp:

  • browser.safebrowsing.provider.mozilla.nextupdatetime

I'm not sure whether Firefox will realize it needs to update the files as you keep running, or whether you might need to do a regular exit/restart to trigger that. (In my test, the files were updated during the first minute after a restart. Or at least new timestamps were created, which I assume means the update was successful.)