The first alert in W3 Total Cache’s readme file was because a site that they linked to had been hacked. That was ok to delete, and the next time W3TC is updated, it will probably come back — but hopefully the other site will have been fixed by then.
The new warning you listed above was in cached files of your site generated by W3 Total Cache, so it’s an unrelated issue, but may be more significant. If you edit that post, did it have any URLs in it? If so, it may mean that a site you linked to had been hacked as well.
W3 Total Cache does clear its cache, so the file must have existed when the scan was run, but was automatically deleted when it became old enough to expire. The original post may still have a bad URL in it — it might even point to a site that is normally ok.
If you want to check Google’s reported status of a particular URL without visiting it, you can use their safe browsing diagnostic tool here:
https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/safebrowsing/diagnostic/
Just copy and paste the URL of the site, and click the search button. If all of the URLs on that page turn up ok, it may also mean that one site that you linked to was temporarily on the list, but has since been removed.
-Matt R
First — stellar reply. In an internet full of people who cannot coherently respond to a simple question, I’m dumbfounded by the completeness of your response.
Second, you nailed it. I used the safe-browsing diagnostic and it reported that a pingback on the post in questions came from a site that was “not safe to visit right now”.
So I killed the pingback as spam, and I hope that will take care of it.
Many thanks again.
Great, thanks for the follow-up and for the feedback!
-Matt R
