Takeover risk

UserVoice subdomain takeover.

A subdomain still pointing at a UserVoice account that no longer exists is not untidy. It is claimable.

What it looks like

A subdomain on your domain has a CNAME pointing at a uservoice.com target, and loading it returns UserVoice's unclaimed page rather than a working site. The visible signature is text along the lines of "This UserVoice subdomain is currently available".

Both signals are needed. A CNAME pointing at UserVoice is completely normal when the service is in use. It only matters when the target is no longer claimed.

Why it can be taken over

Cancelled UserVoice accounts free the subdomain, and the message on the unclaimed page is unusually explicit about it.

What an attacker gets

  • Content served from your subdomain, on your domain, usually with a valid certificate UserVoice issues automatically.
  • A phishing address that passes every check a cautious person would run, because it genuinely is your domain.
  • Access to any cookie your main site scopes to the parent domain, which can include session data.

How to fix it

Remove the record. Feedback and idea portals are frequently set up during one product cycle and abandoned in the next.

Full removal steps for any DNS provider are in the dangling record guide.

Stopping the next one

These appear whenever a hosted service is trialled and dropped, so one cleanup does not settle it. The habit worth building is deleting the DNS record in the same sitting as the cancellation, because those are separate actions and only one is on anyone's mind.

Check yours

See whether anything on your domain points nowhere.

The free subdomain check finds every name still resolving and confirms which targets are unclaimed.

Other services with the same risk

Each has its own detection signature and removal steps.

Unbounce · Netlify · Fastly · Pantheon · Zendesk · GitHub Pages

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