Badware Website Clearinghouse

Our Clearinghouse lets webmasters and users see which URLs are on which blacklists at a given time. Search for your site, or another you’re interested in, to see if it’s currently listed or has been in the past.

Independent review process

Our independent review process is a check on accuracy and efficiency for blacklist operators, and it acts as due process for webmasters. Request an independent review of your site to petition for removal from our data providers’ blacklists. Site owners can also refer to our FAQs to understand why their sites are blacklisted.

Tips for users and website owners

Learn how to identify, remove, and prevent common types of badware infections. Creating a new website? Defending an existing one? Read our Tips for Cleaning & Securing Your Website and learn how to protect your visitors, or learn about ways to avoid badware infections on your computer.

Community forum

Our volunteer-led online community, BadwareBusters.org, is a forum for everyone from security experts to computer novices to request and offer badware assistance. Need additional help cleaning out a badware infection? Want to share a story about how you defeated some badware or report a badware URL? Become a Badware Buster!

Guidelines and definitions

StopBadware’s guidelines for badware websites and badware applications set principles for blacklists and serve as a reference for consumers. What is Badware? describes common badware behaviors and terminology. We collaborate with our working groups and the community to develop these guidelines and keep definitions up to date.

Best practices

StopBadware’s two current sets of best practices were developed to create a common industry standard for both reporting badware URLs and responding to badware reports. Both best practices documents were developed with the input of cross-industry working groups. Our reporting best practices prescribe steps for reporting different types of badware URLs to the parties best positioned to clean them up or take them down. Our best practices for hosting providers provide high-level guidelines for hosting companies to follow when they receive reports of badware on their networks. Security-conscious web hosting providers who pledge to follow StopBadware’s best practices can display the We Stop Badware^™ Web Host seal to demonstrate their commitment to protecting users.

Aggregated data & badware trends

Research tools, like our Top 50 Networks and Top 50 IP Addresses lists, highlight changes on networks over time. We publish aggregated badware data to draw attention to trends that may require action on the part of network providers, and that reflect providers’ success in cleaning up their networks.

Reports and insight

We advocate for positive change in public policy and offer insight to government and the industry. Read our past reports and policy recommendations here. Keep up with our analysis of news and emergent trends on The StopBadware Blog.