We can stress the amount of scams that are occurring online over and over, and still, at this very moment, someone is being scammed out of hundreds (or worse) thousands of dollars. Why people don’t believe in karma is beyond me. I digress.

When buying a domain without using escrow, ALWAYS VERIFY THE DOMAIN’S OWNERSHIP through a service such as http://webpermit.net/whois.php. And ONLY use the email address listed in the whois page to perform transactions.

If the seller cannot RECEIVE emails at the email addresses listed in the whois, then do not do business. This is a definite RED flag.

And keep in mind that emails being sent can be spoofed, so don’t trust an email that is sent, unless you can verify the address when your message is replied to.

1. Send a test email to the email address listed in the Whois data to verify that the seller is in fact the owner of the domain.

2. Send a deposit of at most 75% of the price of the domain.

3. Upon domain transfer (which should take at most 24 hours), send the remaining balance.