Avoid being blocked/blacklisted for no reason?

[0liv3r-IARTS]

Hello everyone,

I am the co-founder and head developer of a company and web3 project which recently launched their public beta version. Suddenly after a couple of weeks we got blacklisted by MetaMask and our users get this brutal red warning window in their browsers.

Thankx to the super quick help from @harrydenley (god send!) our domain and site have been removed from the eth-phishing-detect config.json file but it has been over 24hs now and our domain is still blocked for no reason whatsoever.

We have invested months of work and thousands of dollars into this project with an entire team of people and only because some random incompetent person added us to a blocklist all is being damaged and in jeopardy.

We are currently in innumerous investor meetings and started our marketing campaigns.
Jobs are at stake, our reputation has been damaged.

I can’t believe that this is the sense of this tool and something should be done.

This system has to be more reliable and especially faster. It’s all great, to try to save users from scammers and of course we are all for it but it can’t be done on the backs of honest working people, honest businesses and big investments. This is just negligent and reckless, to say the least.

The minimum would be some guidelines on what is expected to avoid getting on this list in the first place, perhaps some process in advance to get whitelisted with the proper documentation.

How can someone with a legit company and project make sure this doesn’t happen again?

We did nothing wrong, we implemented the “site connect and message signing” via the Moralis API to the dot. All founders are fully doxxed, and known business people for decades.

We are easy to reach, easy to ask on any doubt and have 100% clean reputations in countless servers, projects and partner companies.

How is it possible that some random report gets this type of power? This is basically an abuse of power to be quite honest.

I know that the people here are honest developers, people who want to make the web a better place like we do too. I hope that someone rethinks the process behind this tool and uses this post to make things better to avoid punishing good people for nothing.

Thank you all for your time.

[nakedwinnie]

Hey @0liv3r-IARTS, very sorry to hear this has happened. If you have already been in contact with @harrydenley then the issue will be resolved as soon as possible.

I will also relay your message internally to the team.

[0liv3r-IARTS]

yes yes, actually @harrydenley was not only super quick to help, he also endured me venting about our frustration quite a lot. He also told me it will take some hours, but this has been more than 1 day ago and the domain is still blocked.

The attendance from MetaMask Devs is outstanding but I question the tool and mechanism itself. I mean if domains get blocked simply because of one user report something you can just create to much damage.

My main doubt is how someone can avoid getting “again” blacklisted? Isn’t there a way to get whitelisted, send in some documentation, verify ourselves etc.? some process to make sure this wont happen again.

Imagine you put 500k dollars in a marketing campaign and then your domain gets blocked out of nowhere. Even if only for some hours the damage is massive. We are luckily still in our early days but I would like to avoid this happen again. After all there is not even a reason why we was blocked and I would love to hear from the responsible person who blocked us. Its cant be just a random process, and our site had and has really all information and is clearly not some fake/pishing etc. project.

thx in advance

[nakedwinnie]

There is currently no whitelisting process but the team will continue to discuss and see how the system can be improved.

Sorry again to hear about the frustrations, and Harry will be able to provide more clarity over the situation if further needed.

[0liv3r-IARTS]

Thank you @nakedwinnie I am in touch with @harrydenley and we figured out the issue already which is caused by the slow CDN update of the .json file with the domain name. It seems some countries are renewed during others are very slow with this process. This causes the site to be blocked since now 2 days. I guess in our case this is soon solved but I urge the team to find better solutions.

I suggest a couple of things.

1. Some whitelist process based on domain ownership with documentation, IDs and or cooperate docs.
2. A clear list of rules published, to follow to avoid getting blacklisted for simple mistakes in the code.
3. Blacklisting in several steps. Maybe warnings with more clear messages for the users. Dont condemn domains and projects without good reasons and someone confirmed.
4. Dont accept reports from a single person (like in the moment) to shut down projects which spend millions, but rather get in touch with the owners 1st and or act only on MORE THAN one report.

I am involved in communities with millions of users and we handle it that way. Usually if one report something its far from being correct but if a dozen people say the same you can guess there is something about it.

Allover I think the both processes for blacklisting and whitelisting have to be tweaked to identify both cases, scammers and legit projects correctly.

Benjamin Franklin stated it as: “it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer”.

Its defiantly not right to punish legit projects for the scammers out there.

Right now this seems to be handled like in some police ruled state where you shoot first and ask later. Basically, the current system put someone in the prison first, based on what a neighbor sees through the half dirty window and let them rot for some days to figure then out that this person was innocent and send them of with a “sorry, s**t happen” message.

long story short, I am more than open to discuss ideas, help creating some structure. If my post helped to get the ball rolling would be already great.

MetaMask is a great app, the devs have done a fantastic job to make life easier for web3 users and provide a massive service to the entire web3 community. But this concept of blocking sites fast and unreliable like now has to be stopped.

Thank you everyone for working together