Let get Kosher, verified membership.....

[steveatvillas]

This is an open letter to Adam:

I've just surfed around the Legal Issues section of DNF, and there seems to be an increase in bad faith transactions going down. Not only from outside our membership, but even from within our own ranks.

So, Adam, anything you can do to verify member's identity, and perhaps a ranking system for buyers/sellers, would be greatly appreciated.

I am a member of a dating site—yes, It's true, I am a lonely heart shipwrecked in Spain—and, this site requires that all members verify, verify, verify. Otherwise, you are invited to the door, as in the outer side of same.

Yes, you'll see a drop off of members. But wouldn't it be cool for all of us who choose to remain to know that we are dealing with colleagues, who further choose to deal with each other in good faith? And charging a fee is not enough. What's a few hundred bucks to someone with ulterior motives. To a scammer, this is just a cost of doing business.

As the domain business gets taken out of the wild west mindset into a field of professionalism, wouldn't we prefer to weed out the duff and have a bit more security in knowing that we are, indeed, professionals?

Personally, I'm in this business for the long haul and I've already committed substantial resources to it. I'd like to think that there are like-minded individuals with similar objectives.

Other members, feel free to chime in.

Steve

[tinner666]

Except for some ole-timers that don't seem to need it, it's agreat idea. ( No offense meant to the ole-timers. The ones I'm talking about even catch the scammers and have been here a long time and post often.)

But, I feel even verified members could have their accounts hacked and how do we protect against that? That's a concern. The only way to allay that fear is some form of checks and balances whenever somebody posts to sell or buy. No clue how to do that and it would be labor intensive, unless there was some form of automated IP scanning. I dunno. Too dumb to know myself.

[Banned: theinvestor]

Adam mentioned implementing a process soon where all new members need to become verified.

This cuts down i think 90% of scams. But doesn't change the fact that you need to have email accounts that are not free. Hotmail and gmail should not be on whois.

[tinner666]

Now here's a thought. I just got this from legal thread about a possible scammer using a yahoo addy. Why not a requirement that on top of verification, we require members to use their own address? Mine is my own dot-com. That's kinda hard to fake when responses are required. It's how we sign up and verify sign ups.
Any domainer must have his/her own address. Right?

[draggar]

I prefer to keep my contact email (including WhoIs) though GMail because it is pretty central, has great spam protection, and I can access it from just about anywhere, even most mobile phones.

Also, scammers can just as easily get @(domain) email addresses than the rest of us.

As for verification, right now it is voluntary (for now):
http://www.dnforum.com/dnfverified.php

[tinner666]

Then maybe have it so admin has a dot-com mail for each member, not seen unless members allows it?

[Raider]

I don't see mandatory verification happening here, DNF is going to lose way too many members, and even less will sign up. Not all members come here to sell, many come here to learn and interact with other members.

Here's one solution to the problem, If your selling domain(s) to someone you dont know or to a member who is not verified, You can insist on payment options other than Paypal.

Escrow

Check
Cashiers Check
Money Order..... All subject to hold.

Problem with these are, most buyers/sellers DON'T want to wait.... Well they can avoid that wait by simply becoming verified... Paypal has a verification process so they DON'T get ripped off, so it's understandable that we should have one here, Just don't make it mandatory.

[Irish31]

Could work that if you want to buy or sell on DNForum, you must be verified. If you just want to post and read, then you don't have to.

This would give new members enough time to browse around and get comfortable with the environment before they want to go ahead and start being active buyers and sellers.

The argument of having this in place will turn too many people away doesn't hold much water for me. The alternative, which is happening now: Scammers Heaven, is already turning Adam's good members away in droves.

I don't think we have much choice. I hope it gets off the ground, in whatever capacity it is implemented.

[flamewalker]

Mandatory to buy/sell would be fair imo. I've been on sites that you can join and chat etc but you can't use certain features without paying or becoming verified... I don't think its unreasonable or will have a big impact (except for scammers).

In fact, I just took 2 minutes out of my day to get verified, even though I don't do much sales/purchases here...