Adwords Insanity - Malicious or unwanted software > Circumventing systems

A couple months ago running nopCommerce 4.20 (and currently), we got flagged in Adwords as:

"Malicious or unwanted software"
"Circumventing systems"

Nothing changed on the site since we upgraded (six months before that), and no malware was found. I'm certain there is no malware. Upon escalation with all the evidence Adwords support requested (which proved no malware), they came back with the offending links as those non-SSL category links which get redirected from previous versions to the equivalent current link (which were actually hidden in our Ads Extensions and like that for 18 months or more...and originally setup by one of their "specialists"). Example:

http://... /c/7/category-name

which gets redirected to:

https://.../category-name

After correcting the ads extensions to the most recent version of the category name link, submitting, failing, and escalating again, then they sent back to me links that are just basic website fundamentals (image files, css files, etc.). Example:

/Content/images/view-grid.png
/Content/images/view-list.png
/bundles/acbvktfmotesztfeinuxuppu0bhl_kemj0iuwfasbjok.min.css

So for months now, I've been stuck in this ignorance loop where I've proved there is no malware, yet their "tool" (which they blindly rely on even when the case is escalated) says otherwise, and therefore, won't listen to reason (to say the least). They say they won't remove the block until the malware is removed, which is false, because there is no malware and won't do anything unless the "tool" does it for them.

Anyway... this is the nutshell version. Like I said, this has been going on for months to the point of insanity...

My only thought is that their "tool" is still referencing those "/c/1/category-name" links (since they are still valid redirects behind the scenes) even though we are not using any of those links now.

As a test, does anyone know an easy way to disable these "/c/1/..." redirects links through the UI? Or code?

Does anyone have any other ideas why this might be happening?

As always, I really appreciate any help.

P.S. We sell fabric, so nothing risque or otherwise questionable and have been using Google Ads for nearly eight years. This issue literally happened overnight.

Furthermore, we are basically running a default version of NopCommerce 4.20 with the default theme slightly modified.

Therefore, if it can happen to us, it can happen to you... because again, I'm certain there is no malware.

Have you tried old link redirection with status code 301 ?

Good idea, I basically gave up on it as Google Ads doesn't really work well for us (and we basically noticed that after turning it off for a while).

I used to do 301s for other deleted products, but hadn't thought about it in this case. In theory, that redirect should get hit before any redirects nopCommerce is doing. I'll definitely give it a try. Thanks for the suggestion!

My other thought is to delete the old records from the UrlRecord table, but not sure what any repercussions are... but believe that table is responsible for those redirects Google Ads might be flagging us on. I would assume those are 301s as well, but not sure about that.

I was also thinking it might be just the http to https redirects too as I do it at the site (IIS) level, in the nopCommerce settings, etc. If I remember correct, Google Ads had our non-SSL address for those links which tells you how long they were working before getting flagged and ultimately creating this issue.

Hi,

I dont think deleting from URL Records table is required because the URL structure you mentioned that I never seen after nop 3.30 (when I start to learn)
for eg. http://... /c/7/category-name

I see there can be problem when you move from other ecommerce solution to nopCommerce, in that case 301 redirect will be helpful (SEO & may be google ads)

You also can do redirect to HTTPS from iis directly with status code 301.

Hi @sumnone, have you got any result ?

Not yet, I'm working on something else now and put this on the back burner. Even if we get it fixed, I doubt we'll go back to Google Ads anyway, so it's definitely a low priority at this point.

If I figure it out though, I'll definitely post back the solution...

Just want to add my .02 cents here. If the circumventing systems issue is caused additionally by the malicious or unwanted software message and you still have access to the account, i.e it's not disabled, then it can be resolved, otherwise if the account is banned, it's very, very hard to restore and almost impossible. I have had this scenario happened a while ago.

Recently, i was getting for another G ads account that i manage only the malicious or unwanted software error and got it resolved by using this site https://www.maliciousorunwantedsoftwarefix.com/

I hope that it will be of use as well.