One will preferably sell or buy a website only to a known person. When dealing with a regular poster in a forum, the risks are limited. On the contrary, people coming out from nowhere should be avoided.

• There are often chargebacks with Paypal and frauds with Western Union, especially when buyers come from countries such as Romania, Russia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.
• There is a large deal of teenagers participating in forums, and some of them are just seeing the sale process as a game, with no real intention to buy/sell a domain or a website.
• Some ill-intentioned people contact the sellers in some marketplaces such as Sedo or Afternic and say that they agree to pay the price asked by the seller. But they also affirm that they need for their company an evaluation of the website, which will be conduced by an independent organism and has to be paid by the seller. Eventually, they receive a commission from this organism but never buy the domain or the website.

Another precaution is to check who is the real owner of the domain. And also if there is no trademark issue related to a website.

Most of the time, using an escrow service will avoid the risks, as payment is sent to a third party (for example escrow.com), which will not deliver the money to the seller until the transfer is complete.

 

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