3 ms·

Why was the domain blacklisted though? What can we do to prevent blacklisting in the first place?

by blenderob 8mo ago

nguyenkien 8mo ago
From false alarm to something previous owner did. Remember domain is recycled.
- ssiddharth 8mo ago
  The domain has no history as far as I could search and the site was up for almost 6 weeks with no issues before it was nuked. I used it with Apple's review process!
xp84 8mo ago
Most definitely nothing, as no sentient humans are probably involved in the process except possibly malicious people that report a site in bad faith.
otterley 8mo ago
That’s my question. I’ve launched many fresh websites that have not been marked as unsafe by Google. If they were habitually doing this, there would be far more reports of it. I suspect there is something the author is not telling us.
- bilkow 8mo ago
  Even if the false-positive rate is very small (e.g. 0.01%), you probably won't be affected, but more than a hundred thousand of websites would be and that would still be an issue. I have no idea how big is the false-positive rate. There are many of reports of the same happening to other sites, some of the top ones (you can find many more by searching HN for "google safe browsing"): - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33526893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33526893 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25802366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25802366 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45675015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45675015
- ssiddharth 8mo ago
  The site is already back online after the post. You can check yourself. If I really did have malicious content on the site, this post would have had zero effect on the result.
  - otterley 8mo ago
    How did you get it back online?
kccqzy 8mo ago
The big scary red warning page should at least tell you it’s phishing or malware or something else. OP didn’t have a screenshot of that. You can easily go to a safe browsing test site yourself at testsafebrowsing.appspot.com and find that Google does divulge the category of the blacklisting. OP says: > no gore or violence or anything of that sort That’s not even the right criteria. OP is confused about Google Safe Browsing vs Safe Search.
- ssiddharth 8mo ago
  I just wanted to cover all the bases. The site has one outgoing link to the App Store and 3 screenshots.
  - kccqzy 8mo ago
    That sounds like a competitor of yours manually submitting your site to Google for “impersonating” them or something. Anyone can submit URLs to Google to suggest it be blocked: https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/ https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/ Perhaps some overworked underpaid analyst had a lapse of judgement. I’m sorry that this happens to you.
    - Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
      wait, this actually makes things sound even worse because anyone who might not like your product can add it to google and google can sometimes be none the wiser and then add it to phishing link which could then lead to their domains (ie. any TLD's hosted by radix.website) being lost in void essentially unless you have verified the domain in google analytics and even then I would consider this whole situation to be so messy. At this point, NEVER buy any radix.website TLD domains. I am seeing pinggy had the same issue with their .online domain and this actually definitely caused hurt to their business https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40195410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40195410 (I saw this post from their comment in here referencing it)
voidUpdate 8mo ago
If the domain is being given away for free, it will be used a lot for scams etc, so a lot of systems will just start blocking it immediately. When I got my first domain, I used one of the free TLDs and my university blocked it completely due to it being a scam. Not for any of the content on it, just the TLD being commonly used by scammers
- zadikian 8mo ago
  Probably cause of things like "southwest.online"

Why was the domain blacklisted though? What can we do to prevent blacklisting in the first place?

nguyenkien 8mo ago

From false alarm to something previous owner did. Remember domain is recycled.

ssiddharth 8mo ago
The domain has no history as far as I could search and the site was up for almost 6 weeks with no issues before it was nuked. I used it with Apple's review process!

xp84 8mo ago

Most definitely nothing, as no sentient humans are probably involved in the process except possibly malicious people that report a site in bad faith.

otterley 8mo ago

That’s my question. I’ve launched many fresh websites that have not been marked as unsafe by Google. If they were habitually doing this, there would be far more reports of it. I suspect there is something the author is not telling us.

bilkow 8mo ago
Even if the false-positive rate is very small (e.g. 0.01%), you probably won't be affected, but more than a hundred thousand of websites would be and that would still be an issue. I have no idea how big is the false-positive rate. There are many of reports of the same happening to other sites, some of the top ones (you can find many more by searching HN for "google safe browsing"): - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33526893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33526893 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25802366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25802366 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45675015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45675015
ssiddharth 8mo ago
The site is already back online after the post. You can check yourself. If I really did have malicious content on the site, this post would have had zero effect on the result.
- otterley 8mo ago
  How did you get it back online?

kccqzy 8mo ago

The big scary red warning page should at least tell you it’s phishing or malware or something else. OP didn’t have a screenshot of that. You can easily go to a safe browsing test site yourself at testsafebrowsing.appspot.com and find that Google does divulge the category of the blacklisting. OP says: > no gore or violence or anything of that sort That’s not even the right criteria. OP is confused about Google Safe Browsing vs Safe Search.

ssiddharth 8mo ago
I just wanted to cover all the bases. The site has one outgoing link to the App Store and 3 screenshots.
- kccqzy 8mo ago
  That sounds like a competitor of yours manually submitting your site to Google for “impersonating” them or something. Anyone can submit URLs to Google to suggest it be blocked: https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/ https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/ Perhaps some overworked underpaid analyst had a lapse of judgement. I’m sorry that this happens to you.
  - Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
    wait, this actually makes things sound even worse because anyone who might not like your product can add it to google and google can sometimes be none the wiser and then add it to phishing link which could then lead to their domains (ie. any TLD's hosted by radix.website) being lost in void essentially unless you have verified the domain in google analytics and even then I would consider this whole situation to be so messy. At this point, NEVER buy any radix.website TLD domains. I am seeing pinggy had the same issue with their .online domain and this actually definitely caused hurt to their business https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40195410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40195410 (I saw this post from their comment in here referencing it)

voidUpdate 8mo ago

If the domain is being given away for free, it will be used a lot for scams etc, so a lot of systems will just start blocking it immediately. When I got my first domain, I used one of the free TLDs and my university blocked it completely due to it being a scam. Not for any of the content on it, just the TLD being commonly used by scammers

zadikian 8mo ago
Probably cause of things like "southwest.online"