sounds like the makings of a business service
Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted
131–140 of 195 posts
Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted
#132This sort of thing is also an issue for phone numbers, some other company could have used your new number for robocalls and gotten it spam blocked on Truecaller and similar services.
Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
The post talks a bit about this: In a perfect world, when your legitimately good content isn’t being surfaced by Google, it’s a failure on their part, and their problem to solve, not yours. In practice, it is your problem and you have to do a bunch of work to help them see that their current assessment of your domain name is no longer accurate. You're right, the fault lies with the search engines, but in practice it…
We should avoid words and concepts which places the blame unfairly on mostly powerless individuals.
Domains aren't individuals. Owners of domains aren't necessarily individuals either.
Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted
#134I've had an opposite experience. One domain I bought was used for an entirely different purpose in the past, which got linked on a Wikipedia article in references. This gives me some good link juice and at least matches the geo area of the previous business. Since it's an extremely niche entry and low on the list of references, I decided to be slightly naughty and not touch it for a couple of years. Not sure what's t…
Enchanted?
Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm guessing here because I'm not the author but I believe this statement is directed towards the blocklisting entities because they don't provide transparencies or a method to reach them to resolve issues with a domain once it's aquired by someone else. That absolutely is the issue of those entities.
At one point of time when I had to deal with people submitting phishing links to a web service I owned, I learned some of the tricks that phishers use to get around reports, such as using IP geolocation or the accept-language and accept-encoding header to determine if the phishing page should be served. With tricks like this, it's not a surprise to see why the companies operating blocklists are hesitant to make this…
If the process required you to verify ID, e.g. a passport + video selfie, some accountability might be possible. But that might be too invasive for many folks.
Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted
#136> Ideally, search engine algorithms would give new domain owners a fresh start. Sadly, I think this would be instantly gamed by abusers. They would release the domain name and attempt to register as a new owner or start repeatedly doing handoffs. It's difficult to tell who the owner is changing between and whether or not the new one is a better actor than the former.
> It's difficult to tell who the owner is changing between and whether or not the new one is a better actor than the former. This doesn't seem like that hard of a problem to solve, because these are domains with negative reputation, i.e. worse than zero. So if a) the domain is no longer hosting any of the stuff previously complained about and b) is no longer receiving new complaints over a period of a year, it costs…
3 assumptions that from my read are baked into your comment.
- Any empty domain starts with the same reputation
- Registering a new domain is a 0 cost action
- The eng effort to reset domain reputation is 0
Certain domains are used by abusers more often, usually due to them being cheaper. Forcing them to move domains is extra friction to the abusers which "haunted" domains force more than the proposed new system.
For the last point, I think it's simplifying a complex system change. Even if the new system was marginally better, it could be a large eng effort and not worth pursuing.
edit: styling
Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted
#137Another "haunted domain" check is by trying to post about it on social media. I ran into this with my current project's domain name. After building an MVP and trying to test the social sharing functionality, I found that Facebook was blocking the domain outright. Turns out there was some spamming from it years ago. Getting it unblocked was extra fun, as the page to request manual review was itself broken! Thankfully…
I had that one happen as well, after launching a project. I could even post in a messages to friends.
Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
At one point of time when I had to deal with people submitting phishing links to a web service I owned, I learned some of the tricks that phishers use to get around reports, such as using IP geolocation or the accept-language and accept-encoding header to determine if the phishing page should be served. With tricks like this, it's not a surprise to see why the companies operating blocklists are hesitant to make this…
If the process required you to verify ID, e.g. a passport + video selfie, some accountability might be possible. But that might be too invasive for many folks.
This doesn't work because there's a nearly unlimited supply of people willing (out of desperation, drug addiction, or just plain poor decision making) to let bad actors use their IDs.
Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted
#139> search engines treat links to your site as a massive signal of relevance and trust
I am admittedly a bit distant from SEO. The above is not true and hasn't been true for a long time.
Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the process required you to verify ID, e.g. a passport + video selfie, some accountability might be possible. But that might be too invasive for many folks.
This doesn't work because there's a nearly unlimited supply of people willing (out of desperation, drug addiction, or just plain poor decision making) to let bad actors use their IDs.
Also, all that info has been leaked a billion times now, and there are tools to allow real-time filter/overlays of faces to make it even easier.