Unwanted bot verification popup

[SheilaJohnston]

Hope this is the right place to post this question.

Since quite recently, a bot verification message has started to pop up when I visit my site: "To help us keep this website secure, please wait while we verify you're not a robot! It will only take a few seconds." I didn't implement this pop-up so I suppose it was done by my hosting provider. However I haven't come across it on most other sites I've visited.

I suspect it is both deterring visitors and blocking access to the ads.txt file. Would it risk a DDOS attack to ask the hosting provider to disable it?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[AMurray]

You might ask your host if it's something they implemented. Can you capture a screenshot and post it to this thread?

I would do a full malware and virus scan of your PC and also would recommend you run an audit of your website with mysites.guru (an invaluable tool for website owners). Mysites.guru will give you a list of any issues it finds, with a whole heap of advice on fixing the issues or finding out more information about them.

[SheilaJohnston]

Thank you for your reply. I think it must be connected with another issue - the site's https verification suddenly disappeared for reasons unknown and it was flagged up as "not secure". I contacted my host and they have supposedly re-activated it this evening,

The robot verification message has gone (for good, I hope). But there is now a new cookie consent pop-up (image attached). The square one I installed myself but the generic footer one is new and unwanted.

[AMurray]

I didn't see anything that was shown in your screenshot. I saw a brief message about the browser checking it is secure - which I think is a feature of the browser. Google shouldn't display any site without a valid SSL certificate (Https).

For me, Google Chrome still shows the site as "not secure" i.e. invalid SSL (or at least that's the direction its heading in and same with most other modern browsers).

I saw a cookie consent message, but Ididn't see the pop-up screen demonstrated in your screenshot.

The site loads on Google Chrome, but gives a 503 error on Edge.