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Never buy a .online domain

0xsid.com

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Re: Never buy a .online domain

#71

Post by roblabla »

forgotaccount3 wrote: post #46
nickweb wrote: post #12

Hot Take: the proactive action of the registrar here is probably more beneficial than the number of false positives captured. If the registrar is aware that Google is hot on blocking potentially harmful sites, it's right that they take action expeditiously. The bigger problem is the unbanning - for which there should be a better system, probably that should take the form of the registrar having a short grace period t…

> The bigger problem is the unbanning The was my first thought as well. Yes, using the Safe Browsing list feels wrong, but I don't know enough to speak definitively in that regards. However wouldn't a relatively simple solution be that if a registrar is choosing to use some third party's list of banned DNS entries that the registrar then also implement sufficient unblocked components that will allow people to be unba…

There is _some amount_ of justification to ban TXT. There have been a few cases of C2 servers using DNS to send instructions to malware, so letting TXT slip through the cracks would still allow for that.

Now whether this downside justifies the massive problem it causes on false positives...

Re: Never buy a .online domain

#72

Post by sznio »

palad1n wrote: post #68
ranger_danger wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ones used by freenom were particularly abused: https://prezkennedy.com/2026/01/15/the-free-domain-trap-the-... > Freenom’s terms of service allowed them to “cancel” a free domain at any time without warning. Users reported for years that as soon as their free site started getting significant traffic (and becoming valuable), Freenom would reclaim the domain and fill it with ads, effectively hijacking the user’s ha…

Oh, sh!t, I used to own a .tk! Have no idea what happened to it.

At least for the last few years of Freenom, you could only get a domain for up to a year. Once that lapsed, they parked it and you had to pay to extend it further.

Re: Never buy a .online domain

#73

Post by b112 »

integralid wrote: post #45
NikolaNovak wrote: post #22

Oh man. The infinite loops of impossible verification by large companies that should know better are massive pain peeve of mine. This goes right to the top for me, along the ubiquitous "please verify your account" emails with NO OPTION to click "that's NOT me, somebody misused my email". Either people who do this for a living have no clue how to do their job, or, depressingly more likely, their goals are just complet…

No need to look for malicious intentions, this is just a feature that costs money so it's very low (or zero) priority for profit driven organisations. I wonder if finding people responsible and spamming then with their own service emails would make the team care enough to fix this. But of course that's mostly dubious, probably illegal, and shouldn't be a responsibility of some vigilante hacker

If bartenders are legally (including criminally!) liable in some jurisdictions for their customers, then certainly a chain of legal liability can exist in other industries.

Re: Never buy a .online domain

#74

Post by avaer »

dizhn wrote: post #52
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #18

> The domain ... has been suspended due to its blacklisting on Google Safe Browsing Et voilà ... ! this is precisely the slippery slope I warned about a decade ago. The indirect censorship becomes direct censorship, defeating all the arguments about the morality of such a list. And: > Not adding the domain to Google Search Console immediately. I don't need their analytics and wasn't really planning on having any cont…

That is the bit that jumped at me immediately too. Why would a registrar take it upon itself to suspend a domain that another entity entirely blacklisted as part of their own completely opaque process? Who is Google? God? On the flip side of the coin I cannot get a site removed that is a blatant rip off of one of our websites being actively used for invoice redirection fraud.

It's like being unable to get a passport because Microsoft has you on The List, and Microsoft needs to see your passport to check why you're on the list.

Considering that getting a domain is a normal part of business these days, this kind of thing should be illegal. Not to mention, why does Google have any say in this?

Re: Never buy a .online domain

#75

Post by otterley »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #18

> The domain ... has been suspended due to its blacklisting on Google Safe Browsing Et voilà ... ! this is precisely the slippery slope I warned about a decade ago. The indirect censorship becomes direct censorship, defeating all the arguments about the morality of such a list. And: > Not adding the domain to Google Search Console immediately. I don't need their analytics and wasn't really planning on having any cont…

Google’s allowed to have an opinion. But that doesn’t mean that the registrar should be suspending the domain immediately in response. These two mechanisms should be decoupled.

Re: Never buy a .online domain

#77

Post by dathinab »

mystraline wrote: post #10

So, how is this not libel by Google? The claim was that you were running an "unsafe site". Its their job to prove that, and not just "black box says so". And you have system and reputational damages. Go for small claims suit, $5000. It'll cost more than that for their attorney to go to your jurisdiction.

because google safe browsing is only supposed to display a "not safe to browse" warning when using chrome browsers (and maybe some other browsers) wich you can (theoretically) dismiss(1)

it's not meant to have any other consequences

so basically what happens is that because of hearsay of google thinking you site is not bad Radix does what normally should involve a judge order (taking down the whole domain)

(1): Yes that still would cause damages on any site with customers, but like way less and way more fixable then what happened here.

Re: Never buy a .online domain

#78

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

We need to rethink the web so that fewer third parties are involved in things that seem on the surface to be an A-B conversation. To say nothing of the trustworthiness of those parties, having them involved at all is needlessly brittle.

Re: Never buy a .online domain

#79

Post by account42 »

> Update: Within 40 minutes of posting this on HN, the site has been removed from Google's Safe Search blacklist. Thank you, unknown Google hero! I've emailed Radix to remove the darn serverHold.

I wouldn't party too soon - from my experience getting something removed from Google's libel machine doesn't mean the same process that put it there in the first place is fixed and it you will most likely go through the same thing again and again.

> Not adding the domain to Google Search Console immediately. I don't need their analytics and wasn't really planning on having any content on the domain, so I thought, why bother? Big, big mistake.

This is just another way how Google has inserted themselves as the gatekeeper of the web.

Re: Never buy a .online domain

#80

Post by otterley »

mystraline wrote: post #10

So, how is this not libel by Google? The claim was that you were running an "unsafe site". Its their job to prove that, and not just "black box says so". And you have system and reputational damages. Go for small claims suit, $5000. It'll cost more than that for their attorney to go to your jurisdiction.

It’s not libel. Defamation requires a false statement of fact. Claiming a website is “unsafe” is an opinion.

(IAAL, but this is not legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney for legal advice.)

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