Ok so here's the deal. I've been looking at investing in some premium domains and came up across a LLL.COM premium domain that was selling in the $$,$$$ range. HOWEVER ive just found out from searches on google that apparently the domain is stolen What i want to know, is... 1. What protection does a buyer have when buying domains? 2. How do you actually verify the owner? Or what process do you take when buying premium domains? If they're listed on Sedo.com i would have assumed verfication would have been done though if someone is hacking peoples accounts where does it leave us buyers? 3. Has anyone experienced this before? Tips? Suggestions? Seems rather worrrying that i could have spent in the 5 figure region on a domain to then have it taken off me at a later date? Paulie
Internet fraud is defo at an all time high at the moment and this is something that i have seen mentioned before. The problem that people have is that if they have been hacked and have lost control of their email and domain holder account, there is very little that can be done without legal action. I know that with paypal the buyer showing that the domain has been pushed would leave them ruling in the sellers favour. Bad but true.
I'm not so sure it would work like that. If the buyer proved their account was hacked im sure they could get the domain back. My question is how do you go about making a legit purchase? If somone hacked cnet and attempted to sell download.com what would happen to the buyer? How could the buyer assure that they was buying off the legitimate owner? Its alot of money to lose with scams like that. Paulie
You basically have to conduct your own investigations when you make your purchase. Ask questions and ask them to do something to the site, doesn't have to be major, could simply be to bold a word/letter on a page. Also i would buy any big cost domain on your credit card as long as you have fraud protection.
Again i dont think your getting my point. If someone has stolen a domain by hacking into someones account they can obviously "prove" the site is theirs by editing the site as you ask them, however if they have stolen it...... Paulie
This is difficult to know that the seller is legit or not until he has the control over the domain. But the best thing is emailing the domain owner by checking the whois details there you may sometimes find the actual owners name, email or phone number. hope this helps.
and do not think your credit card fraud protection is always on your side. My ex-bank TCF Bank is a scam. A hotel charged me $150 after I had already been charged for my rooms, and a week after I had left, and I asked my bank to dispute this, and provide credit, I even ask TCF bank to show proof (a signed receipt) They refused, and they would not return my funds. These days, banks are willing to throw their customers under the bus for merchants they do not even know, or do business with, and with TDbank, I filed a dispute on crap software that was not worth a dime, and told them it was not as described... think TDbank cared? no, we do not care either, the govt says we do not have to provide protection for such transactions.... TCF Bank TDBank.com
Right on the whois. There is also a website which name I cannot remember off the top of my head which provides a history of whois and ip changes for a site. If it has been recently changed you can contact the previous owner as part of your due diligence.
That site is called DomainTools. Be aware it's a paid service because it's costly to offer it for free. As mentioned earlier, one will have to verify on their own. There's no buyer protection, and currently there's no so-called market incentive for it.
I haven't used them for a couple of years, but I'm pretty sure I did not pay for them. Either way it's definitely worth it if you are putting any real money on a domain.
There is no perfect way to ensure that the buyer isn't a hacker. In addition to checking for recent changes in whois records, the key on any major transaction is to know your buyer. If your buyer wants to keep its identity hidden, that should be a red flag. I've recommended to clients that they get a real name, street address and telephone number and then independently confirm that those match. Yes, with advance planning those can be faked too but that takes a lot of extra work and a different skill than a hacker might have. Another idea is to stall the closing out a few weeks while you do your due diligence. If the domain was stolen, it is likely that the true owner will take some action with the registrar to recover the domain sooner rather than later. Another option would be to require that the money sit in escrow for a while to allow any problems to surface.
I wonder how after all this running sites i still havent got an escrow account. Need to look into this really. I assume everyone uses www.escrow.com? As for finding out street address etc, phone number... I dont see how that helps. A street address is going to generally be for a different country from me, so are you suggesting to write them a letter and getting them to respond? Paulie