• About
    • History of Dallas SEO
  • Contact
  • Topics
    • Bing
    • Blogging
    • Branding
    • Domain Names
    • Google
    • Internet Marketing
    • Link Building
    • Local Search
    • Marketing
    • Public Relations
    • Reputation Management
    • Search Engine Marketing
    • Search Engine Optimization
    • Search Engines
    • Social Media
    • Tech
  • Advertise
  • Services
    • Search Engine Optimization
    • Ongoing SEO Services
    • SEO Expert Witness
    • Google Penalty Recovery
    • Mini SEO Audit
    • Link Audit
    • Keyword Research
    • Combine Websites SEO Services
    • PPC Management
    • Online Reputation Management
    • Domain Name Consultant
    • Domain Names & Expired Domains
    • Domain Name Appraisal

Bill Hartzer

GoDaddy Airo: Register your .com domain name today!
Home » Domain Names » Denied SSL Certificates Because of Their Domain Names

Denied SSL Certificates Because of Their Domain Names

Posted on September 8, 2017 Written by Bill Hartzer

For the second time in a row, one of my domain names has been denied an SSL certificate because of it’s domain name. But, this second time, the website went down without warning, despite being on CloudFlare.

tldr; I was denied, twice, with two separate domain names, because I have the word “bank” in my domain names.

Jump To

Toggle
  • The Background
  • Denied an SSL Because of the Domain

The Background

To provide a little background, I live in a small town of 3503 people (and a lot of cattle) in Texas called Mabank, Texas. It’s right next to Gun Barrel City, Texas, about an hour southeast of Dallas. Back in the late 1990s when I moved here, I tried to get ahold of Mabank.COM, but that’s being used by a bank, the Macon-Atlanta State Bank, in Macon Missouri.

I had to resort to buying (and using) Mabank.Net for one of my servers, and a few years later, I put up a website for my small town called MabankOnline.com, only updating both of those sites once every few years. Also, there are other “official” websites that are town-related websites, such as MabankISD.Net (the town’s school system), and the town’s website is at cityofmabanktx.org, which are not HTTPs.

Denied an SSL Because of the Domain

Back in November 2017, I started having issues with with one particular domain name on the Mabank.net server at HostDime. The issue was a brute force attack on one of the WordPress sites hosted on it. Support at HostDime ran a cPanel update to try and obtain a new SSL for the hostname, which uses a name server at Mabank.net.

That’s when HostDime ran into an issue:

“Due to your hostname having the word ‘bank’ in the name the validation process is going to take longer than usual. This is to prevent scammers from purchasing SSLs for a bank website which is not legitimate. We will check back again on Monday to see if the SSL was issued and if it has not then we will get in contact with cPanel and Comodo to issue the SSL.”

Then, after the SSL issue was (luckily) resolved by the support staff at HostDime, the issue with the SSL was resolved. The response from support was:

"It is unfortunate since you having nothing related to banking. Luckily, your old server already had a valid SSL issued and we were able to migrate that over to your new server without any issues."

Well, unfortunately my issues with domain names and SSL continued.

Since Google has been really trying to force all website owners to move their websites over to HTTPs (SSL), this year I decided to move a lot of the websites that I own over to HTTPs. Since I have a lot of small-ish websites that don’t get a lot of traffic, it doesn’t make sense for me to purchase SSLs for each and every site that I own. Since Cloudflare offers free SSL certificates if you use their service, it was logical for me to use Cloudflare. I use their paid service for this blog, so adding all of my other sites to Cloudflare to use their free SSL option was easy.

Back several months ago, I moved one of my small local websites (that has been up and running for over 10 years), MabankOnline.com, over to Cloudflare. I made all the necessary internal changes on the WordPress site to move it to HTTPs. For months it did fine–even kept search engine rankings that it has had for 10 years. Then, just recently, I noticed that the website was, all of a sudden, unreachable.

I logged into Cloudflare to check the status–and it apparently was up and running. I paused the site in Cloudflare, expecting it to come back on, even checked the server it was on. Nothing. I went ahead and put in a ticket at Cloudflare, trying to find out what was going on. I got a response, fairly quickly:

It looks like we have had issues renewing your certificate due to concerns over potential phishing activity based on the name of your domain. We are working with our certificate authority to resolve the issue, and I will update you as soon as I can.

In the mean time, you can pause Cloudflare to restore service.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

So, basically, Cloudflare had an issue renewing the SSL certificate for my domain name, MabankOnline.com, because it had “bank” in the domain name. And the only way that Cloudflare recommended dealing with the issue was to pause Cloudflare to restore the domain name so it would resolve:

pause cloudflare

So, what’s what I did. I needed the website to resolve and not be down–so I paused it and it now resolves. But that didn’t take care of the issue of the SSL certificate being denied.

A few hours later, as I finish up writing this post, I received an email response from support at Cloudflare:

Your SSL certificate should be reissued and you should no longer be seeing these errors. We are investigating the root cause of this issue so we can ensure this does not happen again.

Well, it does look like the website, MabankOnline.com is back up and running. But honestly, I don’t think the issue needs to be investigated by Cloudflare. They will find the root cause of the issue, which is the fact that I have “bank” in my domain name. And, there’s another BANK besides Mabank, Texas. Apparently having ‘bank’ in your domain name will get your SSL certificate denied. You usually (in my case) can get it reinstated upon appeal, but I’m kind of leery about getting another SSL certificate for some of my other “mabank” domain names.

This is exactly why I am really behind the use of the New TLD “.BANK”. This is a closed TLD (Top Level Domain), where only an approved financial institution can get a .BANK domain name. If the banks in the United States moved to a .BANK domain name, we’d all know that it’s actually a bank or financial institution if they’re using a .BANK domain name. Just like we can trust a .GOV and a .EDU domain name.

Is there anything I can do to ensure my “Mabank” domain names and websites aren’t denied an SSL certificate? This appears to be an issue that’s related to the name of the town I live in, and the domain names I’m registering and using (putting up websites related to my town).

Filed Under: Domain Names

About Bill Hartzer

Bill Hartzer is the CEO of Hartzer Consulting and founder of DNAccess, a domain name protection and recovery service. A recognized authority in digital marketing and domain strategy, Bill is frequently called upon as an Expert Witness in internet-related legal cases. He's been sharing insights and research here on BillHartzer.com for over two decades.

Bill Hartzer on Search, Marketing, Tech, and Domains.

Recent Posts

  • Unbounce Doubles Down on AI and Automation to Boost Go-To-Market Teams July 10, 2025
  • NameSilo to Acquire SewerVUE Technology in $2.45M Deal July 10, 2025
  • Internet Marketing Ninjas Acquired by Previsible.IO July 9, 2025
  • Metricool Brings Real Analytics to Personal LinkedIn Profiles July 8, 2025
  • This Cleveland Agency Found a Smarter Way to Rank in Every Suburb—Without Opening More Offices July 8, 2025
  • Survey: Gen Z Reuses Passwords but Demands Bank-Level Security From Small Businesses July 8, 2025
  • Liftoff Reveals What’s Actually Working in Mobile Ads July 7, 2025
  • EasySend’s Big Move: AI Tools That Make Static Forms Obsolete July 7, 2025
  • Is Social Media Failing Small Businesses? New Survey Reveals a Hidden Blind Spot July 7, 2025
  • Why Cloudflare’s Pay Per Crawl Is a Trap for 99% of Websites July 2, 2025
  • The Hidden Risk of Double Letters in Brand and Domain Names July 2, 2025
  • GEO Verified™ Launches to Help Brands Survive the AI Search Shakeup July 1, 2025
  • RetailOnline.com Hits the Market After 25 Years—And It’s Built for the Future of E-Commerce July 1, 2025
  • AI-Powered Task Planning: The Future of Business Efficiency and Personal Productivity June 30, 2025
  • New Yoast Add-On Turns Google Docs Into an SEO Power Tool June 26, 2025
  • Simon Data Flips the Script on Marketing with AI Agents June 26, 2025
  • IAB Lays Down the Law for Gaming Ads—Here’s What Brands Need to Know June 26, 2025
  • Google Review Extortion Text Message – Scam Warning for Business Owners June 25, 2025
  • Google Names SearchKings Top AI Innovator for Transforming Lead Quality June 24, 2025
  • Marketing Exec Buys Social Media Firm in Deal That Signals Big Plans June 24, 2025

Hartzer Domains

Bare-Metal Servers by HostDime

DFWSEM logo

Bill Hartzer is a Brand Ambassador for:

Industry Friends

I Love SEO
WTFSEO
SEO By the Sea
Brian Harnish
Jeff Lenney
Jeff Gabriel
Scott Hendison
Dixon Jones
Brian Hartzer
Navah Hopkins
DNAccess
SEO Dallas
Confirmed Stolen

Connect With Bill Hartzer

Bill Hartzer on Twitter
Bill Hartzer on BlueSky
Bill Hartzer on Instagram
Hartzer Consulting on Facebook
Bill Hartzer on Facebook
Bill Hartzer on YouTube

Categories

  • Advertising (109)
  • AI (201)
  • Bing Search Engine (8)
  • Blogging (43)
  • Branding (19)
  • Domain Names (316)
  • Google (260)
  • Internet Marketing (52)
  • Internet Usage (95)
  • Link Building (53)
  • Local Search (63)
  • Marketing (232)
  • Marketing Foo (34)
  • Pay Per Click (9)
  • Podcast (19)
  • Public Relations (9)
  • Reputation Management (14)
  • Search Engine Marketing (46)
  • Search Engine Marketing Events (60)
  • Search Engine Marketing Firms (94)
  • Search Engine Marketing Jobs (33)
  • Search Engine Optimization (189)
  • Search Engines (223)
  • Social Media (302)
  • Social Media Marketing (58)
  • Tech (16)
  • Web Analytics (21)
  • Webinars (1)

Note: All product names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners. All company, product and service names used in this website are for identification purposes only, and are mentioned only to help my readers. All other trademarks cited herein are the property of their respective owners. Use of these names, logos, and brands does not imply endorsement.

 

Hartzer Consulting

Website, Content, and Marketing by Hartzer Consulting, LLC.

Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Terms of Use

Copyright © 2025 ·