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[Bug]: Google Safe Browsing reported "deceptive #2970
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adam (Adam Melkus)
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Reference: starred/audiobookshelf#2970
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Originally created by @fritz-fritz on GitHub (Aug 26, 2025).
What happened?
Google decided to flag my domain today for "Deceptive Pages". The only thing served on this domain is the ABS server. I'm confident this is a false flag from their tools and I don't have insight into what caused it to be flagged. However, this could potentially become a more widespread problem?
What did you expect to happen?
I expect Google to not evaluate ABS as a deceptive website.
Steps to reproduce the issue
Unknown on how to reproduce but here's my setup
Audiobookshelf version
v2.28.0
How are you running audiobookshelf?
Debian/PPA
What OS is your Audiobookshelf server hosted from?
Linux
If the issue is being seen in the UI, what browsers are you seeing the problem on?
None
Logs
Additional Notes
I have upgraded to v2.29.0 and submitted information to Google for review to get the domain un-flagged including the url to this github.
I will follow up with further information if I can obtain any.
I haven't found any further insight into what would trigger this evaluation of ABS by Google but perhaps the webui could use modification?
@Vito0912 commented on GitHub (Aug 26, 2025):
This should no be an issue with ABS, if so many many more users would have this issue. - If so, please correct me.
Please check if you have other services hosted (from the same IP e.g., but other domains), public links shared that contain copyrighted material or in general have things exposed that could be considered not good.
In the end we don't know why Google reports pages as suspicious as there are many factors. Especially if you are using Cloudflare which hides IPs, which Google ofc also knows.
This could also be e.g. newly registered domain, uncommon tld etc. etc.
It's very unlikley that's it is just because of ABS, but ofc never 0%
Edit: Especially some pattern of Subdomains will trigger it. Try a different subdomain and see if it's triggered again
@fritz-fritz commented on GitHub (Aug 26, 2025):
@Vito0912 I definitely agree that this shouldn't be any issue with ABS.
This is the only thing I serve on the domain but as I am using Cloudflare in front there is obviously thousands of other sites that also use the same IP's. This in and of itself should trigger anything.
My ABS server has been live on the domain for the last 6 months and only today got flagged, it is served at
https://audiobooks.<domain>.comand so I also doubt it is related to any of that.This flag against the domain literally just popped up and so I am filling the bug report here in case it DOES become a widespread issue so that we can correlate information and attempt to work around. I will follow up with any information I can determine.
@fritz-fritz commented on GitHub (Aug 30, 2025):
Just to update, I successfully appealed being flagged.
After further research, I believe I have figured out what happened though I have no real confirmation of fact.
I use Google Workspace Business Starter and had an email chain that got erroneously flagged for phishing which contained the server domain, user creds, and a token auth url ( yeah definitely not best practice ).
My belief is that Gmail added the domain to the safe browsing list based off that single email.
@Vito0912 commented on GitHub (Sep 14, 2025):
@advplyr Imho this should be reopened.
This has been reported multiple times now. Maybe the auth change introduced something Google does not like.
But it looks like OP is correct, that ABS has something to do with it. At that point I don't think it's just coincidence
Edit: Altough no clue why ABS should get flagged
@advplyr commented on GitHub (Sep 14, 2025):
I saw one other report in Discord. Is there another I'm not aware of?
The day after this was reported an internal admin site at work had the same thing happen. Which made me think that Google updated something with their algorithm
@Vito0912 commented on GitHub (Sep 15, 2025):
There where two in Discord and one in the Router Base Path issue.
But maybe you are right. Not thought about that possibility
@davidquinney commented on GitHub (Nov 13, 2025):
I have the same issue, Google flags my audiobookshelf server behind a cloudflare tunnel. I host multiple services hosted via a cloudflare tunnel, and its only audiobookshelf that gets flagged on the /audiobookshelf/login URL.
This is detected as "Social engineering content" so I suspect google does not like the way authentication is done.
I have appealed, but it keeps coming back. Are there any fixes we can do on audiobookshelf to stop the domain getting flagged?
@Vito0912 commented on GitHub (Nov 13, 2025):
Do you use OIDC?
@davidquinney commented on GitHub (Nov 13, 2025):
I am not using OIDC, I was considering setting it up but this means I would need to change all my mobile clients to use custom headers - which could be a challange considering they are various non-technical family members
@Vito0912 commented on GitHub (Nov 13, 2025):
No, what you mean is forward auth. OIDC is integrated into the apps. But that's another topic. Just wanted to make sure, because most reports were with users using OIDC.