A reader of ours pointed out that recently the domain name Sale.com was put up for auction on Sedo.com but it turned out to be a fake listing. Sedo.com put up Sale.com for auction with a $500 reserve and the person that listed the domain name did not even own it! Our reader contacted the real owner and it was verified by the owner (James) that the auction was a Fraud and that the domain was not for sale.
Unfortunately this happens quite often and that there is not really a solution to this problem. To prevent losing their mone, auction winners only pay to the escrow setup by Sedo. In this case Sedo was able to catch the mistake and removed the domain today after the auction was bid up to around $88,000.
What is interesting about this particular situation, is the fact that this happened during a time when ICANN is working on revising the WHOIS legislation. There is a push out there to allow domain owners to remain anonymous by not having to disclose their true identity in the WHOIS database.
What happened at Sedo.com this week should serve as a lesson to ICANN and those involved in revising the WHOIS policies! With more and more domain names being auctioned, more and more people interested in the domain industry as an investment vehicle, it is clear that we all need transparency of domain ownership.
When you own a piece of land it becomes public record and it should be no different in the domain industry space. It is crucial that all of us can verify that the seller of a domain name is indeed the owner of the domain name without having to hire an investigator to do so.
Here is a post from NamePros.com about Sedo’s blunder with Sale.com at http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?p=2164836#post2164836.
We hope that Sedo will make changes to their system which verifies domain ownership as a result of what happened this week.
Thank you to our reader, who made us aware of the story!
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