Your LimeSurvey version: 5.4.0
Own server or LimeSurvey hosting: Own server
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I have a LimeSurvey installation used to survey students, faculty, etc. and it keeps being listed as a malicious/phishing site by Chrome/Mozilla/Chromium browsers (we have already changed servers and domains once) and the LimeSurvey installation appears normal; it has not been hacked.

The survey process works like this:
A partner school sends out the link to the survey,
Users register with their e-mail address,
and then they receive an e-mail link with the personalized token to complete the survey.

This process worked flawlessly in 2021, but not in 2022.

One theory is that GMail automatically black-lists any e-mails that link to a form.
I have also filed an appeal with Google about this incorrect blacklisting ( safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_error/ ), but worry that the damage may have already been done, i.e. the site will soon appear on a range of blacklists all around the web and is unusable.

The only solution I have is to give up on the automatic e-mail verification at the beginning of the survey process, and to then do this in a later step.

I am just wondering if any other Limesurvey users have faced this issue, and what kind of solutions they have found.

Thanks in advance for sharing.

pstek wrote:

I am just wondering if any other Limesurvey users have faced this issue, and what kind of solutions they have found.
 

I'm aware of at least one case where a LimeSurvey installation on a domain was blocked via the Safebrowsing-list.
I still don't see a clear pattern why the domain was blocked. The owner of the domain uses GMail too. But there weren't any invitations involved.
But I wasn't aware that GMail blocks E-Mails silently when they domain of this LimeSurvey installation was part on an email too.

I recommend to submit another report. And perhaps try to sent an email with an URL/Domain of your blocked site to and from GMail.
When you see, you won't receive the email, submit an error report in GMail too.

Too me this an false positive caused by Google. Once again we see what happens, when everything is automated and not daily supervised.


 
 

Hi!

I had this case a couple of weeks ago. I checked everything but couldn't find anything that would justify this. And it was only Google that was "complaining".

I did a report at safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_error/ (as recommended by Jelo at the time) and a couple of days later the domain was "free again".

For me it was just two test installations, so no email invitations involved. It is basically never used by anyone else than me. The last access of a couple of other people was actually last year or beginning of this year. But otherwise it is just for me to test things and respond here in the forum.

Like Jelo I think it is a glitch in the Google system and a false positive. I would have a detailed look at the domain if there hasn't been any hacking going on, any strange files that shouldn't be there, etc.

And then send the report and explain what the website is used for, what Limesurvey is and why you think that their evaluation is wrong.

This is a little concerning if Google classifies Limesurvey installations as phishing. Maybe there are people out there using Limesurvey for phishing attacks and thus LS installations became "suspicious". I don't know.

However, the report resolved my problem quite quickly. But as said, in my case basically no outside movement, no emails, etc. were involved, so your case might be different.