Afternic Escrow Service?

Nova · Jan 20, 2006

What's the latest word on Afternic escrow? How does it compare to Escrow.com these days?

austinandrew · Jan 20, 2006

Personally, I'd take it any day over Escrow.com.

denny007 · Jan 21, 2006

escrow.com - totally unsecure for both buyer and seller, escrow.com verify "transfer" of the domain only via whois, which can be easily faked- from buyer or the seller. Cases of this type of scam has been several times reported here on DNF

afternic.com - unsecure for seller. They do as escrow.com, but also buyer has to verify the transfer. So if buyer change the whois back to seller and does NOT verify the transfer, he get money back and keep the domains.

The only safe escrow for both, buyer and the seller, is Sedo and Moniker ONLY. The fact, that so many escrow.com domain transactions have had happy outcome sofar is just that most of people are NOT scammers. So they actually could save huge escrow fees and just make wire + push, would be same level of security - none...

austinandrew · Jan 21, 2006

denny007 said:
afternic.com - unsecure for seller. They do as escrow.com, but also buyer has to verify the transfer. So if buyer change the whois back to seller and does NOT verify the transfer, he get money back and keep the domains.

Can you point to a case where this has actually happened? Although the buyer has to confirm, Afternic still has the money in its possession and can investigate what happened.

denny007 · Jan 21, 2006

Can you point to a case where this has actually happened?

I am not aware if it happened.

Afternic still has the money in its possession and can investigate what happened

How could they, they do not have registrar nor own accounts.

austinandrew · Jan 21, 2006

denny007 said:
Afternic still has the money in its possession and can investigate what happened

How could they, they do not have registrar nor own accounts.

Well, they are a registrar now so they could look into the history. As Sedo a lot of times the domain is transferred directly from the seller to buyer, so I don't see the difference. I know that some times Sedo takes possession of the name first and then transfers it, but not always. Perhaps I'm missing something here.

denny007 · Jan 21, 2006

Well, they are a registrar now so they could look into the history. As Sedo a lot of times the domain is transferred directly from the seller to buyer, so I don't see the difference. I know that some times Sedo takes possession of the name first and then transfers it, but not always. Perhaps I'm missing something here.

OK maybe something changed, I actually did not read their TOS/FAW long time. In fact NONE of the escrow can have the domain in their account, as that could be a lot of possible legal problems. Sedo AFAIL has contracts with major registrars, they will confirm the transfer. Moniker transfers domain first to a Moniker account, than push to another Moniker account, so they can check the transfer.

Now definitely most unsecure yet most widely used is escrow.com