What if a Legitimate Website Gets Blocked? - Apple Club
What if a Legitimate Website Gets Blocked? - Apple Club
ScamZapper
What if a Legitimate Website Gets Blocked?
ScamZapper version 2.0 and later have a feature called "Aggressive Mode," an additional layer of scam detection in addition to maintaining a database of websites that host scam pop-ups. Aggressive Mode looks at each and every websites' code when you visit them, and if there are lines of code that meet certain criteria commonly used by these scammers, ScamZapper will block the website. First and foremost, make sure that you have the latest version of ScamZapper, as updates may bring adjustments to Aggressive Mode and reduce the likelihood of a site being incorrectly blocked.
We do our best to choose criteria that all scam websites have in common, while also trying to make sure that legitimate websites do not fulfill the criteria for blocking, resulting in a false positive. However, a small number of legitimate websites do use some tactics the meet all of Aggressive Mode's criteria. If this is the case, you can turn off Aggressive Mode and still use ScamZapper. To do this, just open Safari, and from the menu bar, go to Safari > Preferences > Extensions > ScamZapper, and uncheck the box for Aggressive Mode. With Aggressive Mode turned off, ScamZapper will still block pop-ups that are in our database. Every site that is in our database has been reported by one or more of our users, and we have personally verified that those sites display the "tech support scam" pop-ups. If a website in our database is legitimate but is getting blocked, which is extremely unlikely, there is a high probability that the web host deactivated the scammer's account, and the site was registered to a new party. We frequently check the sites in the database to make sure this does not happen, but it is possible that this could happen for a short time. It is important to check for ScamZapper updates frequently. If you're unhappy with the app or extension, you're always welcome to uninstall it of course. Just to go Safari > Preferences > Extensions > ScamZapper, and click the Delete button.
As for Aggressive Mode, we are constantly looking for ways to improve our algorithms for detecting scam websites to minimize, if not eliminate, false positives. If we release an update for ScamZapper that mentions improvements to Aggressive Mode, we encourage you to apply the update and re-enable Aggressive Mode, and test it out. We always appreciate your constructive feedback.