Beware of thieves with positive trust at Flippa.com
This is an ongoing situation at Flippa.com and as such, the domains won’t be revealed at this time.
In a nutshell: an unscrupulous domain thief sold stolen domains on Flippa.com and used the rules of the game to his benefit.
How did it happen?
In the course of two weeks, the Flippa.com seller managed to unload two stolen domain names, both short; a three letter .com and a number/letter .net
The Flippa.com system allows its users to build their trust: one gets points for adding a “trustworthy” phone number, adding Facebook and LinkedIn profiles and by transacting successfully on the Flippa.com domain platform.
So far so good.
Our guy, however, simply added a blank LinkedIn account with no connections and a Facebook account that was locked to the public. Adding a phone number that bears the “trustworthy” status is simple: many countries such as India don’t discriminate between disposable and subscribed cell phone numbers.
In a short period of time, by adding up these two sales of the stolen domains, the thief managed to rank a nice +10 trust score; this gave him the opportunity to scale up the sale of another stolen domain: a two letter .net
Acting upon the tip of an ethical domainer who noticed the auction, we researched that two letter .net domain and reported the active auction to Flippa. Meanwhile, we located the legitimate owner and communicated with him via email and on the phone.
The domain was hijacked from the legitimate owner’s account and was on its way to another registrar while the thief put it up on a Flippa.com auction. Flippa.com froze the auction for three days, all while expecting the Admin contact of the stolen domain to get back to them.
Naturally, having control of a stolen domain means just that: faking authorizations. The thief “confirmed” that the domain was legitimately for sale and Flippa unfroze the auction, which ended with a bidder “winning” the domain for thousands of dollars!
We contacted Flippa, urging them to instruct the buyer not to pay for the domain. Initially, Flippa.com support explained there was nothing to be done as the domain was confirmed as “legit” – by its very thief!
Upon letting Flippa.com know that the real owner was already aware of this and is currently in the process of reclaiming the domain, their support team escalated the ticket and responded by taking these actions:
- The seller had his reputation diminished to a negative number
- The buyer was instructed not to submit payment
- Flippa confirmed the real owner got in touch with proof of ownership
On top of that, we received the following statement from Flippa.com support:
Flippa will be implementing new features to verify ownership of domain names being sold on Flippa shortly.
It seems that the current domain name ownership verification process is lacking, particularly with the ability of unscrupulous sellers to create vacant profiles on Facebook or LinkedIn, thus further authorizing the sale.
Hopefully, the domain will be returned, the thief will be banned and perhaps even located; there are two more stolen domains that are now in the hands of unsuspected buyers. Flippa.com deserves recommendation for listening to our continuous requests to stop the auction and suspend the seller’s account.
