Shipped the project, then realized the domain sounds like a phishing scam

I’ve spent crazy amounts of time searching for domain names on past projects.

So this time, I told myself I’d do it differently and pick one in 60 minutes.

I did and it’s giving me a lot of headaches.

The plan was simple

I built a project around Open Banking API maturity in Europe, because I wanted to bring some visibility to the topic.

My thinking on the name was simple: it should start with “bank” and end with a one-syllable word.

So I put it to Claude:

“Give me 20 one-syllable animal names.”

Snipe: any of about 26 wading bird species in three genera in the family Scolopacidae.

Perfect.

• Easy to remember
• “Sniping” also implies precision
• The .com was available

I’m a genius.

Then the alarm bells started

Looking back, it was so obvious this domain sounded sketchy.

A site called “banksnipe”, literally listing out links to banks for users to click through.

And to top it off, I’d built a live treasury dashboard demo wired up to a sandbox account, which set off even more alarm bells for the spam filters. (I took that part down quickly)

So despite having the right intentions, I’m now spending my time filing false-positive reports.

What I’ve done so far

Needless to say, banksnipe is on death’s row and I’ll be finding a new domain for the this project.

But I won’t be rushing it this time.

In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been doing to clean it up:

• False-positive reports filed numerous, only one has come back rejected, but the case is still open
• Disclaimers added throughout the site
• Outbound links removed all of them
• security.txt added, so vendors know where to reach me

The takeaway

You don’t need to spend days searching for the right domain.

But also, spend more than 60 minutes or you’ll end up where I am: filing false-positive reports in your spare time.