Domain registrar failed to respond after offending content was taken down.
Losing your domain is even worse when that domain is your entire brand. Credit: Itch.io
Popular indie game platform itch.io says its domain was briefly taken down for a few hours Monday morning thanks to an “AI-driven” phishing report spurred by the company behind Funko Pop figures.
Itch.io management posted about the domain takedown on social media overnight, complaining of a chain of events that started because “Funko of ‘Funko Pop’… use some trash ‘AI Powered’ Brand Protection Software called BrandShield that created some bogus Phishing report to our registrar, iwantmyname, who ignored our response and just disabled the domain,” the post said.
In a Hacker News comment, Itch.io founder Leaf “Leafo” Cohran said that the BrandShield complaint seems to have originated from a single itch.io user who “made a fan page for an existing Funko Pop video game (Funko Fusion), with links to the official site and screenshots of the game.” That led to independent reports to Itch’s host and registrar of “fraud and phishing” a few days ago.
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While Cochran says the offending page was taken down immediately after the complaints were filed, he suspects the initial complaint meant “our registrar’s automated system likely kicked to disable the domain since no one read our confirmation of removal.”
The itch.io domain was back up and running by 7 am Eastern, according to media reports, “after the registrant finally responded to our notice and took appropriate action to resolve the issue.” Users could access the site throughout if they typed the itch.io IP address into their web browser directly.
Too strong a shield?
BrandShield’s website describes it as a service that “detects and hunts online trademark infringement, counterfeit sales, and brand abuse across multiple platforms.” The company claims to have multiple Fortune 500 and FTSE100 companies on its client list.
In its own series of social media posts, BrandShield said its “AI-driven platform” had identified “an abuse of Funko… from an itch.io subdomain.” The takedown request it filed was focused on that subdomain, not the entirety of itch.io, BrandShield said.
“The temporary takedown of the website was a decision made by the service providers, not BrandShield or Funko.”
The whole affair highlights how the delicate web of domain registrars and DNS servers can remain a key failure point for web-based businesses. Back in May, we saw how the desyncing of a single DNS root server could cause problems across the entire Internet. And in 2012, the hacking collective Anonymous highlighted the potential for a coordinated attack to take down the entire DNS system.
