Your website is your asset. You don’t want anything bad to happen to it, do you? Your website can be a source of income for you. You need to secure your website from any harmful means. It should be protected from all sorts of bad impacts. Cybercriminals or people with evil intentions may try to do something unethical. 

Among all the issues, website redirection is a major one. Website owners may face website redirection issues and wonder – “My website is redirecting to another website?” We will answer this question in this article. Don’t go anywhere, we will share valuable information today.  

How to Stop Your Website from Redirecting to Another Website

Browser redirects are considered the very first step of browser hijacking. But that is not the only cause, your website may fall into unauthorized redirects when you visit suspicious websites. Such websites run their own scripts to make you a victim of visiting pay-per-click websites. This way, they increase the traffic of third-party domains. The funny thing is website owners don’t even realize this issue at first. Eventually, when they find out, it becomes too late. 

The ones who are responsible for such redirections, usually create a source of income through this. They mostly do this with unethical advertising intentions. However, this may not be the only reason. Sometimes, there can be higher motives for such criminal acts.          

Whatever the reason is, we will show you how to prevent unvalidated redirects for various browsers

For Chrome – 

In order to stop unvalidated website redirects in Chrome, you can follow the steps below – 

1. Click the three vertical icons on the top right corner of the browser and go to “Settings.”
2. On the left sidebar, you will find the “Privacy and security” section. Click on it and toggle the “Enable Phishing and Malware Protection” option. 
3. Also, go to Google’s advanced protection program and see what is necessary. 
4. After that, close the browser window.
5. Once you reopen your Chrome browser, Google will give you warnings if someone is attempting your website to redirect.     

For Firefox –

To protect your website from redirects in Firefox, you need to go through the following steps – 

1. After opening the Firefox browser, click on “Open Menu”.
2. Click on the “Options” button to expand the panel.
3. Then, click the ‘Advanced’ option, and following that click on the ‘General’ tab.
4. You find a checkbox saying – “Warn Me When Websites Try to Redirect or Reload the Page”. Check the box to get notified when there is a redirection attempt.
5. Click on ‘Ok’ to finish the process.

For Internet Explorer –

If you are using Windows, Internet Explorer will be the default browser. As a result, it is very important that you keep your website protected from redirections while using this browser. 

1. Hit the “Tools” button.
2. Then navigate to “Internet Options” and click on it.
3. Hit the ‘Security’ tab.
4. Now, set the slider to ‘High’ in the Zone pane so that Internet Explorer can’t run ActiveX controls. ActiveX can be an active source of redirections. Many websites get redirected for this. However, disabling this option may prevent some safe websites from loading correctly. 
5. Once everything is done, click on ‘Ok’ to apply the changes.

Prevent Malicious Redirects

Okay, first we will tell you what malicious redirects are. It is basically a code inserted into a website so that the visitors of that site redirect to another website without their concern. This type of redirect is intentionally inserted by the attackers for creating unethical advertising impressions. As a result, it is very important that you prevent your website from malicious redirects. 

The first thing you need to do is determine whether your site is infected or not. As a website owner, you may not realize it at first. You may notice when a particular person notifies you that he ended up in an unwanted corner of the internet while trying to visit your site. A malicious redirect can occur on some particular pages or posts. Then again, it can also take place before your website even loads.

How to Find and Remove Malicious Redirects

For unvalidated redirects, malicious files can be inserted anywhere on your website. In case you are not familiar with the inner Content Management System or CMS, we recommend backing up all your website and database to a secure location. You can detect malicious redirects by applying the following scans – 

Javascripts insertions in theme files

Your WordPress site contains theme files. And there are javascript entries in them. These entries can be found in the theme’s header. However, these scripts can be elsewhere. You just need to determine which script is responsible for malicious redirects. 

For instance, javascript found in the header can be like this –

Scripts for image files can look like something below –

With that said, scripts in other files can look something like this –

But that is not all, malicious scripts can be inserted into particular posts or pages. You can’t find these files in your website’s files. Rather, these files can be located in the site’s database. You can check out PhpMyAdmin and edit each page or post one at a time.

Moreover, Javascript redirects files can be found in the widgets as well.             

Some tips to locate malicious redirect files

Well, there are easy tricks that allow you to find malicious redirect javascript easily. We have mentioned the following, but there can be more.

1. Not all scripts are responsible for redirects. You need to find out the ones that are performing malicious redirects. Most of the javascript files are related to the core functionality of the website.
2. In browsers, you can inspect an URL by entering the “view-source:” mode. Once you open the file, search for “<script”. You need to look for code or text that is not part of your website. 

To enter and check the source file of a website, type in “view-source:” in front of the URL. For example, view-source:http://www.sitename.com.

3. If the malicious file is in the theme files, you can go to editor mode and remove the offending javascript files. Else, you can download theme files from either an FTP server or cPanel. Then upload the clean files into the server.

Redirects can be Inserted Into .htaccess Files

The .htaccess file is responsible for directing your server before your website even loads. However, these files can be used for illegal redirections. Usually, redirects using .htaccess files are often done by devices or browsers. An .htaccess redirect may look something like below – 

Also, .htaccess redirects can occur through browsers or referrers. Here is a sample of such a file – 

Unlike typical redirects, these redirects are hard to isolate and remove. On top of that, tweaking the .htaccess file can make your site stop functioning. You may also face internal server errors for this. 

Removing Redirects from the .htaccess File

To remove redirects from the .htaccess file, you can contact your hosting provider. You can also download the .htaccess file from the cPanel or FTP server. You need to look for the “hidden” contents inside the .htaccess file. If you find any unfamiliar content, remove it in order to stop unwanted redirects.            

Conclusion

At the end of this discussion, we would suggest protecting your website from all sorts of issues. Especially, be serious when it comes to website redirections. And that’s not all, attackers may try to insert malicious insertions on your website to generate advertising impressions. Most of the time, website redirects go unnoticed. 

Seriously, website owners don’t even realize their websites are being redirected. As a result, you might get confused and ask yourself – “Whether my website is redirecting to another website?” Hopefully, you will figure out if that’s the case by reading this article. 

If you can prevent malicious redirects, you can prevent other types of redirects as well. Just be cautious about your website security and everything will be fine. Thanks for being with us, leave a comment if you have any queries.