if you pay by check or credit card or paypal they will always side with the buyer and/or you will have a record of the purchase. American Express is the best because they are the most secure and "always" side with the card holder so you can chargeback. Also, get their company name if any and full legal name.
You can use paypal for alternate solution of escrow.... you just need to configure your Paypal account with your bank. so It's really very easy for online transaction. I think you must be using your own PC and not from shared PC just for your account security.
meet them in person and make them give you the login and password for the account or call the host company with them on the phone to verify the owners or look them up on whois.com
you can make payment option through oDesk. If anything wrong happened then you can go for arbitration. Hope it will help you.
I've sold many sites before. Best way to handle this is to get a lawyer to draw up a quick contract. They are then bound by law to accommodate and transfer ownership. Its the best way trust me!
escrow for sure. but be careful, there are alot of scammers out there. cover your back and get as much detail of the person as you can
Ignore any other advice in this thread, and go through Escrow.com. Any other method is inadequate, and it's worth the Escrow fees to know you're secure.
I've used escrow.com for a number of different business transactions. You can use them or you can use PayPal. If they don't deliver the domain you expect then you can always open a claim for your money to be returned. I know PayPal gives the person 10 days to respond and if they don't you get your money back. And if you do use PayPal put as much information about what you're purchasing as you can when you send the money.
Escrow appears to be the way to go, I would normally want to front up 25-50% of the money then they transfer and get the final 50-75%.