• Appraisal Scams
• Paypal Scams
• Whois Email Contact Scams

"Have you had your domains appraised already? Can you show me your valuation certificates? As far I know it's a common practice to show appraisal of domain name (even without traffic and web site) before doing business.

Without appraisal I risk to overpay. In other words I won't be able to make a profit on reselling this name. It's very important for you and me to know the current market value of your domains.

Of course, we must be sure that you are engaging an appraisal company with REAL manual service. I heard many appraisal companies often made inaccurate auto-generated appraisals. I will only accept appraisals from independent sources I trust. To avoid mistakes I asked domain experts about reputable appraisal companies in a forum (some forum URL here)"

The scam is clear and simple:
The scammer is trying to recommend you his own appraisal company which charges a very high amount to appraise your domain name. Once the name has been appraised by the scammer, you will never hear again from the scammer because he made his money from your appraisal and has no reason to waste more time by dealing with your emails. You end up with the appraisal cost and you won't be able to catch the scammer because he knows how to hide his identity and there will be no traceable proof that he is involved with the appraisal company.

Common Paypal Scams
Paypal is a great service when it comes to making online payments. However, there are many risks because scammers are everywhere. There are tons of forums where people post stolen Paypal account ID's and there are also many people who abuse Paypal for their scams by setting up fake accounts just to scam you.

The most common Paypal Scam
People use a stolen account to make their payment to make you push your domain name to them quickly. Once your name was pushed or after about 12 hours pass, you will receive a notification from Paypal that a payment has been reversed. The reason will be most likely "Unauthorized Account Access" or a "Paypal Investigation" (after they found out that the credit card owner reversed the payment). The bad news: You lost your domain and you might even have to pay US$ 15.00 in fees for the reversal (Paypal's TOS cover this and you agreed to it).

What to do now?
Contact your domain name registrar as soon as possible and provide any proof you have available. This can be Paypal emails about the transaction or even screenshots which prove you have been scammed. Many registrars will help you get your domain name back if you act fast enough.

Our Advice
When dealing with Paypal payments, ask the buyer to make a "Mass Payment" to you or send an invoice to the buyer. While this is not 100% safe, it is still safer than accepting payments from buyers directly. The reason for this is: Mass payments can only be done if the party who sends the money has the funds available in his account (meaning funds don't come from a credit card - which is much safer). The same goes for invoices: Instead of letting the buyer send you a payment, ask the buyer for his Paypal email address and send a money request. This will ensure the buyer has to login to Paypal and agrees to the payment, which will help you in case you were dealing with a scammer, as it will show Paypal that someone really logged into the account to pay you (and that's something they will investigate).

Do Your Own Research
There are many things you can do to protect yourself from scammers. We would like to mention a few ways to research possible buyers quickly. Paypal offers many tools to do your own research, but many people are not aware of such tools.

Check if the buyer is verified and since when the account exists. You can do so by visiting https://www.paypal.com/verified/pal=buyersemail@buyerdomain.com (replace the email with the buyer's actual email address). You will need to login before you get access to this page. The page will show if the buyer is verified and when the account was created. The longer the account exists, the safer the transaction will work out.

Another way to learn more about the buyer is visiting the payment details once you have received his money. The details will show the email address used, and also the buyer's main email address (in case he used a secondary email for the scam). If you see two different email addresses, you should try to contact the original email address owner and ask him if he really is the domain buyer. Often scammers create secondary email addresses to make things look valid and to receive all Paypal emails instead of the real account owner. That said, if you see two different email addresses in your payment details, make sure to contact the original account owner first.

Whois Email Contact Scams
Another method scammers use to get your money is contacting you using your Whois email address. The idea is the same: They search well known forums to find your sales topic, lookup your email address and contact you by email instead of posting at the forum they found your post. The reason scammers do this is to get in touch without giving you the chance to research them. Imagine a 0 post member with no iTrader ratings wants to buy your domain in a forum. You would be alerted because the user has no history and you might back off because it's too risky. Here is where your whois email comes in like a gift for the scammer. He can email you directly without letting you know who he is and without giving you a chance to lookup the user. Most likely they will create a new free email address to contact you so there is no history of their scams in search engines like Google.

By doing that, you have a higher risk of being scammed because you have no idea who you are talking to. To prevent such scams, simply ask the potential buyer to just reply in your sales topic and tell him you don't deal with email requests. That way the scammer will have to register at the forum where your post is located, or use his username which will help you to investigate him. Your benefit is clear: If the buyer is legit, he will have an established username and possibly a great trader rating and everything is fine. If the buyer doesn't respond, you will know it's most likely a scammer. If the buyer creates a new account and is known to be a scammer, forum moderators will most likely find out about duplicate usernames and ban the "bad guy" before he can scam others. Last but not least, if the buyer creates a new account with no history or trader ratings, it's up to you to decide to deal with him or not by following our tips above.

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