<story><title>Beware HN: The rise of weaponized &quot;abuse&quot; reports</title><text>Reputation management companies are hired to clean up Google search results for their clients. They usually send scary sounding emails, or letters demanding some &amp;quot;unauthorized&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;sensitive&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;threatening&amp;quot; content (created by a user) be removed. They can&amp;#x27;t use a DMCA notice because it isn&amp;#x27;t a copyright complaint. If you do not give in to their demands, they will send the same scary sounding notices to abuse@[host], abuse@[registrar] and abuse@[dns provider].&lt;p&gt;The most unscrupulous reputation management company I&amp;#x27;ve ever dealt with (izoologic) has apparently figured out that &amp;quot;phishing&amp;quot; is the best way to get what they want. They claimed a user-generated page on my site was phishing for credentials (because it happened to mention their client&amp;#x27;s name and had a login form on it). I got this from Namecheap:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;
We are writing from the Namecheap Legal and Abuse team.&lt;p&gt;It has come to our attention that phishing content is displayed on your website at the link:&lt;p&gt;[URL to an entirely innocent page]&lt;p&gt;As a reminder, phishing is expressly prohibited by our Universal Terms of Service Agreement, paragraph 7. &amp;quot;Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)&amp;quot; at https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.namecheap.com&amp;#x2F;legal&amp;#x2F;universal&amp;#x2F;universal-tos.aspx&lt;p&gt;We need you to act promptly in removing the reported content within the next 24 hours. While we always try to avoid having to interrupt our customers&amp;#x27; services, if we receive no response from you or no action is taken within the mentioned time frame, unfortunately, we will be forced to suspend the domain until the matter is resolved.
&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;From my logs, I can see Namecheap didn&amp;#x27;t even visit the page before requiring me to take it down within 24 hours. If I had been on vacation, apparently my domain would have been suspended.&lt;p&gt;If you accept user generated content, you need to be vigilant about handling these weaponized abuse complaints. They can take down your business in a day if you are not paying attention.</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>calibas</author><text>FYI, this post about weaponized abuse reports is being downvoted&amp;#x2F;flagged. It very quickly disappeared from the front page of HN.&lt;p&gt;And I&amp;#x27;m well aware it&amp;#x27;s against guidelines to even comment about this on HN, but it&amp;#x27;s directly relevant to the content of the post and the health of HN as a whole.</text></comment>
<story><title>Beware HN: The rise of weaponized &quot;abuse&quot; reports</title><text>Reputation management companies are hired to clean up Google search results for their clients. They usually send scary sounding emails, or letters demanding some &amp;quot;unauthorized&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;sensitive&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;threatening&amp;quot; content (created by a user) be removed. They can&amp;#x27;t use a DMCA notice because it isn&amp;#x27;t a copyright complaint. If you do not give in to their demands, they will send the same scary sounding notices to abuse@[host], abuse@[registrar] and abuse@[dns provider].&lt;p&gt;The most unscrupulous reputation management company I&amp;#x27;ve ever dealt with (izoologic) has apparently figured out that &amp;quot;phishing&amp;quot; is the best way to get what they want. They claimed a user-generated page on my site was phishing for credentials (because it happened to mention their client&amp;#x27;s name and had a login form on it). I got this from Namecheap:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;
We are writing from the Namecheap Legal and Abuse team.&lt;p&gt;It has come to our attention that phishing content is displayed on your website at the link:&lt;p&gt;[URL to an entirely innocent page]&lt;p&gt;As a reminder, phishing is expressly prohibited by our Universal Terms of Service Agreement, paragraph 7. &amp;quot;Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)&amp;quot; at https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.namecheap.com&amp;#x2F;legal&amp;#x2F;universal&amp;#x2F;universal-tos.aspx&lt;p&gt;We need you to act promptly in removing the reported content within the next 24 hours. While we always try to avoid having to interrupt our customers&amp;#x27; services, if we receive no response from you or no action is taken within the mentioned time frame, unfortunately, we will be forced to suspend the domain until the matter is resolved.
&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;From my logs, I can see Namecheap didn&amp;#x27;t even visit the page before requiring me to take it down within 24 hours. If I had been on vacation, apparently my domain would have been suspended.&lt;p&gt;If you accept user generated content, you need to be vigilant about handling these weaponized abuse complaints. They can take down your business in a day if you are not paying attention.</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>SommaRaikkonen</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a bit...concerning. If I may ask, what was your solution to the abuse? Did you send Namecheap an email to confront them?</text></comment>