Kostas Margaritis

Cloud Architect @ infraws • Polyglot • All things DevOps • Strategic boardgames • @devitconf

[Kostas Margaritis @_margaritis]

Hey @GoogleAds team! We were wrongly flagged for "Compromised Site" & "Circumventing Systems" (site is clean, account verified with legal docs). Case IDs: 0-7270000038374, 5-5539000039028, 2-3850000038361. Only got a generic reply. Ads down a week — Please assist! 😞

[Kostas Margaritis @_margaritis]

Yeah, definitely something is wrong here...

[Kostas Margaritis @_margaritis]

GitHub issues are being used as a spam delivery mechanism. I am receiving scammy issue notifications by email. I attempted to report it repeatedly, and now I’m rate-limited/blocked from submitting abuse tickets.
This is the wrong failure mode. cc @github

[Kostas Margaritis @_margaritis]

@y__commerce @Amr0Khalid @GoogleAds @adsliaison @andreeagheonea @Pavillion_x @dylan_weber19 Well, the key issue here is the lack of actual support.
Hard to fix anything when no one’s really looking.

[Kostas Margaritis @_margaritis]

@adsliaison @Cloudflare @CloudflareHelp @rustybrick any ideas on how we should proceed with a case like this?

[Kostas Margaritis @_margaritis]

Hey @GoogleAds team! We were wrongly flagged for "Compromised Site" & "Circumventing Systems" (site is clean, account verified with legal docs). Case IDs: 0-7270000038374, 5-5539000039028, 2-3850000038361. Only got a generic reply. Ads down a week — Please assist! 😞

[Kostas Margaritis @_margaritis]

@adsliaison For what it’s worth, we migrated our site from Github Pages to @Cloudflare Pages ~2 days before the Google Ads flag.

If that timing isn’t a coincidence… does Google Ads consider Cloudflare-hosted sites a risk?

Serious question. Any thoughts from the @CloudflareHelp team?

[Kostas Margaritis @_margaritis]

No we dont. Everything is from official sources. Site is pure html. It uses Google Analytics, GTM, Cloudflare Web Analytics, Clarity, Google Ads conversion tracking, https://t.co/oXCL9qENJR, and a few SVGs from Wikimedia. It ran without issues for almost 20 days. Domain is marked as safe across all security checks. Account is verified with business registration docs and we’ve also submitted professional licensing since it’s a regulated field. So many similar professionals are allowed to advertise on the platform.

[Kostas Margaritis @_margaritis]

@Amr0Khalid @GoogleAds @adsliaison @andreeagheonea @Pavillion_x @dylan_weber19 @y__commerce That’s wild. The same domain worked fine for almost a year? Google’s own terms say reusing a flagged domain/business can lead to suspension, this just highlights how inconsistent everything is. I am afraid if we do the same we might end up with banned accounts as well.

[Kostas Margaritis @_margaritis]

@Pete_Bowen And how do you personally handle account suspensions or wrong policy flags — especially when support feels fully automated and there’s no clear path to a real review? What do you say to clients when nothing is wrong, yet they have been flagged.

[Kostas Margaritis @_margaritis]

@originaldrago @GoogleAds Have you gotten any kind of review at all, or just generic responses?

[Kostas Margaritis @_margaritis]

Well you make it sound like you actually have an option. I have been in contact with many people the last week that got issues with @GoogleAds suspension and although Google's replies are identical there is no resolution. Most people abandon the Ads project and focus on other mediums. We have the same story for almost a week. A 100% percent legitimate business with legal docs, verified and the domain was flagged with malicious business intent.

[Kostas Margaritis @_margaritis]

Did you use the same domain on the new account, or did you switch everything — including the URLs?

I’m asking because we were told our domain “cannot be fixed,” so I’m wondering how yours avoided getting flagged again. It's so frustrating — final decisions made with no explanation, and domains flagged without any transparency… even for fully legitimate businesses with legal documents.

[Kostas Margaritis @_margaritis]

@Amr0Khalid Is anyone actually reviewing these cases @GoogleAds?

Were you able to get yours resolved Amr?

What’s the catch here — why are small businesses being punished so harshly by automation? The replies are all the same. yet there are no facts, no transparency.

[Kostas Margaritis @_margaritis]

@adsliaison @dylan_weber19 @GoogleAds Hey Dylan — just curious, were you able to get it resolved?

We’re dealing with a permanent Google Ads flag (malicious business intent) after a domain move, and still haven’t had a real review.

[Kostas Margaritis @_margaritis]

@y__commerce @adsliaison That bad? Every answer we got on email was word-for-word what's already on Google Ads Community or other forums. No real explanation, no info - just a final verdict from an automated system. It’s like the decision was made before anyone even looked. Bots rule the rules.

[Thanos Polychronakis @thanpolas]

Greece has it’s first “me-too” national scandal.

It was about time the Greek society got up to speed on the #metoo movement.

Greeks call it “the violence of power”.

#Μπεκατωρου #ΜεΤηΣοφια

[Uber Engineering @UberEng]

Thanks to everyone who attended @devitconf earlier this week in Thessaloniki, Greece to hear our senior software engineer Nikolay Stoitsev talk about migrating microservices from Python to Go!

[Harry Roberts @csswizardry]

🇬🇷 Leaving @devitconf with a very heavy heart. What a wonderful event organised by the warmest and friendliest of people. If you ever get a chance to attend, take it; if you ever get invited to speak, say yes!

[Kostas Margaritis @_margaritis]

@mpetyx @devitconf Come and join us at OK!Thess https://t.co/vjJGQocMjY