Update on Zoho Services Disruption - Zoho Blog

09 Oct 2018 • zoho.com

The shutdown was done by an automatic algorithm in response to phishing complaints against Zoho. … Phishing is rampant and mail services providers like Zoho have devised multiple methods to combat it like blacklisting, flagging suspicious emails, scanning, smart filters, and other methods. According to Symantec, 76% of all organizations have reported falling victim to phishing attacks in 2017.

In this case, the registrar received 3 phishing complaints over the last two months (from recipients of third parties phishing messages impersonating Zoho mail), 2 of which were addressed immediately and 1 was under investigation. To put these numbers into context, just one security service company blocked 51 million phishing attempts in 2017.

[sigh] I feel for Zoho. This really sucks. I wonder how many people literally die every year from broken automated systems behaving poorly without proper oversight. I wonder if there is any research on that?

This type of “abuse handling” with no human oversight/intervention (or obviously not nearly enough) is NOT a good thing.

You have my assurance that nothing like this will ever happen again. We will not let our fate be determined by the automated algorithms of others. We will be a domain registrar ourselves.

Well… I guess that’s one solution - but not necessarily a practical one for everybody.