Had a domain that we werent using much and wanted to make it active again, went to modify a zone and the zone had been removed.
I dont recall removing the domain, couldn’t find anything about it anywhere, went into the audit log and saw it was deleted and purged, but I dont recall doing that.
Then I went to try re-add it and got this message -
This zone is banned and cannot be added to Cloudflare at this time, please contact Cloudflare Support.
Except you can’t contact support via any means for a domain that isn’t in your account?
Have done, I actually submitted another ticket using another of my domains , and its been escalated to the ‘trust and safety’ division.
I’m wondering if they will provide reason as to why the domain was just suddenly dropped with no notification/reason. A dev domain that was IP restricted at that for our development.
Incorrect. The domain was and always has been delegated to cloudflare.
I just had a response from the ‘Trust & Safety’ team telling me the domain was BANNED and DELETED due to it not being “fully setup”.
I’ve asked for clarification as to what ‘fully setup’ actually means, given the domain was active and running on cloudflare for months. I only stopped using it about 2-3 months ago and went to check something on it today noticing it had been dropped from their system.
I’m more concerned about my other domains and other accounts that I help clients manage and what if cloudflare suddenly just ‘drops’ domains without any reasoning.
Aside from delegating the domain, I’m not sure what else ‘fully setup’ could mean.
If I had delegated the domain elsewhere, I would understand the domain being deleted/removed (not banned) but that was not the situation here.
“stopped using” means, I stopped doing development work on the domain, it was still active for all intents purposes , as int he hosting was active / email was active. I simply was not working on the hosting account associated with the domain everyday.
I’ve also just found my original email from cloudflare in 2015, stating the domain had been added and ‘congratulations’ , no mention of any verifications required or that the domain required further setup. Even showing that I had the domain name delegated correctly.
I’m now eagerly awaiting their response, as I’m now concerned my other domains or other domains on other accounts may suffer the same fate.
It would seem your domain expired at the end of July, at which point your registrar seemed to have changed your nameservers. About a week later they were changed back to Cloudflare but I assume at this point the deletion process had already started on Cloudflare.
From what I can tell the nameservers did change at the end of July, as I mentioned for about a week. Most likely after it had expired and before renewal. You might want to clarify this with your registrar.
It would be a typical action for a registrar to take when a domain expires. Your domain’s expiration is on July 23rd, a week later it seems your registrar changed the nameservers as the domain was not renewed. Then another week later you seemingly renewed (updated August 4th), at which point the Cloudflare servers were reset (either manually by you or automatically by the registrar).
At that point Cloudflare probably already noticed the change in nameservers and started the deletion process. I’d also suggest to go through your inbox to check if you have received emails regarding that, as Cloudflare typically sends out notifications before and after it removed a domain.
0 emails received from cloudflare stating the domain changed nameservers.
0 emails received from the registrar stating the domain had expired and lapsed and required renewal, (its set to auto renew)
Oddly around that time I have emails from cloudflare and my registrar about bunch of other domains being added/reenwed but nothing on this one.
Cant comment on that I am afraid. You really best wait for the response of Cloudflare’s support and then possibly clarify it with your registrar as well.
All I can say is, from what I can tell this was the most likely scenario and the reason why your particular domain was removed.
I agree, that is the only scenario that makes sense.
To add more confusion, there is monitoring on that domain that I have 0 alerts for during that period as well.
Sorry for the issues, you would have received two alerts, one indicating the name servers changed and one on the move a week later. Support can confirm if and when these were sent.