Has anyone heard of PhishTank and does Google take them seriously?

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   Muttfaceposted 9 years ago

   Hi there,
   I was checking out my WMT, something that I don't usually keep on top of,  and I noticed 14 links to my personal website from a group called Phish Tank. I was shocked to see that 75% of them had rated my website as a phish. My site provides resources for ESL teachers and I don't even have a mailing list, so I was surprised to discover my lesson plans and grammar worksheets were considered to be such a threat.
   Anyway, I had to sign up to be able to flag the website as being falsely accused, but I would like to know if anyone knows about this group? I would also like to know if Google passes much heed on these types of sites?

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Teaching materials can be very similar, even those you create yourself.  Also, I would check to see if there is another similar site.  If they wrote theirs first, you've got a problem.  Good luck.

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2. 73

   relacheposted 9 years ago

   If your site is collecting information in an insecure manner, it can be flagged as phishing.  Collecting personal info via email, which can be easily hacked in transit, can be considered phishing.
   
   Did you code it yourself or use ready-made software?

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      Muttfaceposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      It's with Wordpress.org. The theme was free to use and the plugin for contact is 'Contact Form 7'. Should I change the theme and the contact form?
      Thanks by the way!

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         Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         I can't see why your site would be accused of phishing, but I would consider changing your theme.  It seems more appropriate for use by an image-heavy site.   Currently you've got very little meaninful content on your home page, which is a negative.  Choose a theme which shows a longer excerpt from each post, or create a static page for your home page which explains what your site is about.
         
         Also you have whole pages which are just lists of links to other pages - those pages appear virtually empty which could be seen as suspect.  Don't use pages for navigation.  Instead, create custom menus in your sidebar, and/or use a theme which lets you have drop-down menus in the navigation bar.  Some themes have a top bar as well as a navbar to give you extra menu space.  I like the Hueman theme for that reason. 
         
         Nothing wrong with contact form 7.
         
         By the way, your site is very slow indeed.  Again, it may be the theme.  Also try installing and running P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) - that will help pinpoint where the bottlenecks are.  If it's a plugin, look for alternatives to that plugin.   Many social networking plugins are a problem, it's hard to find one that's lightweight.

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            Muttfaceposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            "Also you have whole pages which are just lists of links to other pages - those pages appear virtually empty which could be seen as suspect. Don't use pages for navigation. "
            Oops... Newbie mistake. This would never have occurred to me. Thanks for the sound advice!

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         relacheposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         If your contact form is insecure, this could be contributing to the problem.  You may have to beef up your security plugins too.

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3. 83

   CassandraCaeposted 9 years ago

   giving them your info so that they will remove the bad rating seems to me like they are phishing for your private info.  Google has its own way it conducts search.  It would not use a website like this for such purposes.  Are you getting traffic from google?  Were you getting traffic at one time from google?

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4. 80

   Muttfaceposted 9 years ago

   Yes, I am getting traffic. I didn't give them information apart from my email address which I needed to do to sign up. 
   Despite the finger pointing, it's actually a nice idea. It is a community-based approach that aims to clean up the internet. Suspected sites are looked at by the members and they vote on whether it has a phishing agenda.  According to Wikipedia, some of the big name companies use it like Opera, Yahoo! Mail, Kaspersky and Macafee.
   In ordinary circumstances, I'd admire these efforts. I'm just astounded that the voluntary internet police consider my site to be unsavoury, but as the others suggested, the way I'm linking to my articles might be considered suspicious or my security is too flimsy.

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