False Positive or Really Hacked How to Tell Before You Dispute
Filing a dispute on a site that is genuinely hacked wastes weeks and keeps your visitors in danger. Twenty honest minutes of checking tells you which problem you actually have.
✍️ Technical Anshu🌐 Site Owner Guide⏱️ 7 minute read
🎥 Watch the full video - every step shown live on screen
Every blocked site owner wants to hear the same sentence: it is a false positive. Sometimes it is. But Symantec also flags thousands of genuinely compromised small websites, and their owners are usually the last to know. Before you write a single word of a dispute, run this split test. It separates the two situations using evidence instead of hope.
Sucuri SiteCheck - remote scan (example)
Scanning: yourwebsite.com
Malware: Not found
Blacklists: Norton Safe Web - Listed
Google Safe Browsing - Clean
Website firewall: Not detected
👆 Example scan output - always run the real scan against your own domain and read your own results
1
Run Two Independent Remote Scans
Remote scanners see your site the way a visitor's browser does, including tricks that only appear to outsiders:
Sucuri SiteCheck - free scan for malware, defacement and blacklist status
VirusTotal - submit your URL and read the combined verdict of many engines
Google Search Console - if your site is verified, the Security Issues report shows anything Google has found
One clean scan is a hint. Two or three independent clean results are evidence.
2
Look for the Classic Hack Signs
Some infections hide from quick scans. Check these directly:
Unknown admin users in your CMS or hosting panel that nobody on your team created
New files with random names in your site folders, or core files modified on dates nobody worked
Strange redirects - the site behaves on desktop but sends mobile visitors somewhere else
Spam pages you never wrote - search Google for site:yourwebsite.com and look for casino, pharma or loan pages
Any one of these means the warning is probably right, whatever the quick scans said.
3
Check What Changed Without You
In your hosting file manager, sort the site's folders by modified date. Recent changes you cannot explain - especially to files like index.php, .htaccess or your theme's header - are the fingerprints of an infection. On WordPress, also compare your plugin list against what you actually installed; an extra plugin you do not recognise is a red flag, not a mystery to ignore.
4
Decide With One Simple Rule
The rule that keeps you honest and saves time:
Any check finds real malware - cleanup first, dispute afterwards. Full stop
Everything is clean and the block appeared right after a redesign, a hosting move or a new script - it is very likely a false positive; dispute it, and attach your clean scan results to your message
Disputing a dirty site does not just fail - reviewers re-check, find the infection, and your next, genuine dispute starts from a weaker position.
5
If It Is Hacked, Do Not Dispute Yet
Close this tab and clean first. A proper cleanup means removing the malware and its backdoor, changing every password (hosting, CMS, FTP, database), and updating all software. Only when independent scans agree the site is clean does a review request make sense - there is a separate guide in this series for the exact order to request re-reviews in.
⚠️ Honest note: if you find real malware and are not confident you can remove all of it, restore a known-clean backup or hire a cleanup service. A half-cleaned site passes a quick scan, fails the deep review, and gets flagged again.
🎥 See It Done Live in the Video
Watch the video to see what your visitors hit when Symantec steps in - it is the fastest way to understand why this check matters.
Scans say clean but Norton still blocks me. Is that a contradiction?
No. The scanners checked today; Norton's rating may be based on older data, or on signals a quick scan does not test. If your checks are genuinely clean, that is exactly the evidence a dispute is built on.
Can a neighbour on shared hosting cause my flag?
The rating follows your domain more than the server, but a previously abused domain or a badly compromised neighbourhood can contribute. The checks on this page still apply - verify your own files first.
My developer says it is a false positive. Should I just trust that?
Verify it yourself with the scans and sign checks above. It takes minutes, and it is your domain and your customers at risk - not your developer's.
This guide is based on the Technical Anshu video linked above • Stuck on a step? Ask in the video comments - you will get an answer 🙏