hey all, I have suspicions about a certain site sale, so I was wondering is there some way to fake the DP site verification process, or if someone has his site verified on the DP sales thread that means that he owns it 100%, or at least has access to ftp there?
When a website is verified it means the user has access to the FTP. Doesn't mean they own the domain...However, how would they get the ftp details to upload the file to confirm?
Anything can be faked given enough resources. If someone hacked their hosting account or domain account, it could be faked. Best thing to do is always use an escrow service.
vaguely, never sold a site here, bought lots of them though. I usually use escrow so it's not a problem, but for smaller sites for under $500, it can be an issue. Thanks all for the help! Shawn, have you considered also setting up a domain verification process? Sending an email to the whois address for confirmation - seems like it won't be very hard to implement and can help a lot with filtering many of the scammers here.
ok I'm confused now, doesn't the site verification process only require uploading a certain file to ftp?
Site verification is similar to Google's ownership verification for Webmaster Tools. You can either upload a unique file that we give to a specific location of your site, or you can add a specific TXT record to the DNS for your domain. So either a user will need access to the hosting account the domain is on in order to upload the file or they would need access to be able to add DNS records to their domain. So yes... given enough resources, anything can be faked, but faking it involves hacking the user's hosting and/or DNS account. Unless you would like to enlighten me as to how you could upload a specific verification file via FTP to a specific location on a domain/site you don't own (like how would you fake the file upload to digitalpoint.com)?
@Thread OP Why not ask the seller to upload a .txt file with the text of your choice while you have a talk with him on skype/IM? (Ask him to do it live) Altough this isn't a 100% secure method, but does help (Scammers will upload the file and vanish at the time of transferring the website)
If they could upload a specific file that we require for verification, they will be able to upload another file... so really not any better since you are doing the same thing.
A member like you can simply ask the seller to do the first step, After the domain is pushed and you have the site files, you can proceed with sending the payment.
Doing it live would make the buyer assured of the fact that he actually owns the domain/site and isn't a hacked attempt, and having it done while a teamviewer session is on can help reduce the suspicion (I know it isn't the correct word, but I couldn't find a better substitute) But even then, it isn't bulletproof, if the seller is in the mood of playing scam games, he'll scam no matter what verification is done! Use escrow