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# Manifold Security: placeholder domains in agent skills now lead to scams
- URL: https://globalfeed.ai/en/manifold-security-placeholder-domains-in-agent-skills-now-lead-to-scams/
- Published: 2026-09-28T18:50:02.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-28T18:50:02.000Z
- Description: According to a Manifold Security report, yoursite.com and your-domain.com, often used as sample addresses in documentation, now send some visitors to fake security alerts and investment scams. The two addresses appear in more than 350,000 GitHub files and hundreds of agent skills.
- Author: GlobalFeed Editor
- Tags: Manifold Security, agent skills, cybersecurity, scams, x-yok, dil-en, elle

**Manifold Security**, which works on the security of AI agents, has reported that placeholder domains used as samples in documentation, such as yoursite.com and your-domain.com, now show ads that lead to scam pages. According to the company's report dated September 24, 2026, these two addresses appear in more than 350,000 GitHub files and in about 350 of the agent skills the company examined.

## The problem

When software documentation needs a sample address, writers often use made-up-looking addresses such as "yoursite.com". According to the report, these addresses are not among the reserved ones, so anyone can buy them; today both sit on parking services and carry advertising. Agent skills are instruction files that tell AI agents how to do a task. When they contain sample addresses, an agent or a user that reads and follows the documentation can end up on these domains.

## What was found

Manifold opened the two addresses 24 times in a real browser. Most visits ended on a parking page or an ordinary ad page; two, both on macOS, ended on a scam. One showed a fake "MacOS Security Center" alert claiming the computer had viruses and sold a counterfeit antivirus renewal. The other promoted an investment scam on a fake copy of a news site. According to the report, the redirect happens only after the page's code runs, so tools that read the address as plain text never see it, and the domains look clean on blocklists. The company also scanned for other placeholder domains of the same kind and reports that they appear in 1,536 of the skills it examined.

## What to do

According to the report, documentation should only use example.com, example.org and example.net, which are reserved for this purpose. Manifold says checking whether a domain is on a blocklist is not enough; the question is who owns the domain today and what its advertising chain does.

The report does not document a real victim or a case of an agent being scammed this way; the skill counts are limited to the collection the company examined, and the affected skill marketplaces are not named. The report describes the projects that cite these addresses as victims of a later change. Manifold builds security products for AI agents. For a fuller picture, it is worth following evaluations from independent researchers as well.

Sources: [Manifold Security: placeholder domains report](https://www.manifold.security/blog/placeholder-domains-ads-serve-scams?ref=globalfeed.ai), [Manifold Security: third-party.com report](https://www.manifold.security/blog/third-party-com-placeholder-clickfix?ref=globalfeed.ai).