GitBook Domains Blocked by Google Domains for UGC Phishing Activity

GitBook is a documentation platform where teams can document everything from products to internal knowledge-bases. Users can create and publish content on the platform publically, the vast majority of their users are using GitBook to write better content and share knowledge. However, a minority of (typically robotic) users abuse the GitBook platform to create spam content or content that attempts to impersonate others in order to phish information from visitors.

This is a good case study on why you don’t host user-generated content (without moderation) on the same domain that handles your main content or company email.

Over the past few weeks, they have seen an increase in phishing content on the GitBook platform. They identified the content and banned all accounts involved. Google had also identified this content internally and flagged it with them, which eventually led to a blanket ban across all their domains. Anyone who has spent time trying to get in touch with Google will know what happens next.

The issues they raise include :

• The first e-mail they received from Google was to tell them that Google had suspended their domains. No warning what so ever.
• Google Domains isn’t suitable for sites hosting user content. As soon as a single URL on the site is detected as malicious, the entire domain is banned. One of the funnier (although certainly not at the time) exchanges with the Google Domains team was around whether Google themselves would use their domain service for their own products. Imagine the entirety of Blogger or YouTube going down due to a single piece of spam content.
• A lack of contact or responsibility: Overall the communication with the support team was poor. They received very little communication from Google’s side and what little they did receive was poor and unhelpful.