Malicious software
Check that your site is free of malicious software or compromises that may harm or gain unauthorized access to a computer, device, or network.
Common reasons:
Outdated files, themes, or plug-ins on hosting providers, such as WordPress
Various forms of malicious software on your site, such as computer viruses, ransomware, worms, and other malicious programs or apps
Compromised third-party ad networks or analytics vendors
Here are some things you can do:
Update all themes and plug-ins on hosting providers, such as WordPress, to the latest version.
Add only trusted third-party ad network or analytics vendors.
Verify whether any unexpected or suspicious URLs are loading from your website and take corrective action in removing them. Learn how to identify and remove malicious software.
View and fix issues by going to the Policy Manager. For each issue, you can do one of the following:
• Edit your ad to fix the issue. Saving your ads after editing them will automatically resubmit your ads for approval. As such, you do not need to submit your ads for review again manually.
• For ads with destination issues, first fix your ads’ destination page, then hover over the ad’s “Status” column and click the “Appeal” button to submit your ads for review.
We review most ads within 1 business day. Some reviews may take longer if an ad requires a more complex review.
If you have successfully fixed the policy issues, the ad’s status will change to “Eligible” after some time.
For others to assist you, you’ll need to provide more information about the placement of the ads, and how you have added them to your Ghost theme.
Whilst I am familiar with Google Ads, I don’t use them nowadays, and never have with Ghost. Nonetheless, you should pay attention to the policy violation: Restricted Verticals - Credit, Malicious software. Clearly there is something potentially malicious or untoward on your site, or linked from your site. I suggest you scan your site for vulnerabilities and malware–there are plenty of free resources online–and remove any infringing content or links. If you don’t think there is an issue you can appeal.
We did not place any ads on the server however used the Google Tag Manager to track ads to bring traffic to the site. The ads are Text ads created on Google Ads to drive traffic to the site. We tried with basic Ghost installation too creating a campaign and trying to drive traffic through a text ad. That too gave the same error.
Its nothing to do with placing any ads in Ghost. Its more outside in.
This is a problem for me too. Google runs a mysterious scanner tool and it says that we have violated the Malicious Software policy. No Security issues show in Google Search Console.
I want to run ads promoting this site. We pay for Ghost Pro so we need your help getting the issue resolved.
I’m guessing ghost has something going on google doesn’t like because way too many people see this error for it to be coincidence.
The people above saying it’s the site itself well I have a clean ghost installation with basically nothing on it except basic content and it shows as malicious and compromised but only for google.
Basically in the notes it says if you are using a compromised cms that is your fault so it seems google has ghost flagged as compromised