Sedo Verification is over the top (25.Viewing)

Today I sold a domain on
@Sedo
for $3,000. Only after the sale, Sedo triggered "seller verification" through Adyen at You are being redirected.

The verification form asks for my legal first and last name exactly as on my ID, date of birth, country of residence, email, phone number, full residential address, postal code, city, and a copy of a passport, national ID, or driver’s license.

This is the kind of document set a bank asks for when opening an account. But I am not opening a bank account, taking a loan, requesting credit, or initiating a suspicious payment. I am simply receiving proceeds from a domain I already owned and sold.

If there are concerns about the origin of the funds used to buy the domain, then this level of verification should be applied to the buyer and the buyer's payment method - not to the seller. The buyer is the party sending money into the transaction. I am the existing domain holder receiving a payout.

Sedo already required me to confirm control of the domain through DNS using a TXT record. For a domain marketplace, that should be enough to establish that I control the domain and am authorized to sell it.

Sedo also already has my SEPA payout bank account in the account settings. The bank beneficiary name matches the first and last name in my Sedo account. For a payout to my own bank account, that should be the privacy-respecting verification method: bank beneficiary/name match, payout details, account history, domain ownership, and, if really needed, bank confirmation - not passport upload by default.

The timing is the worst part. I spent a lot of time listing 22,000+ 4L .com domains on Sedo and changing DNS records to prove ownership/control. Then, after the first sale, I am suddenly told that to receive a relatively small $3,000 payout I need to provide the same level of personal information usually required to open a bank account.

If bank-level KYC is mandatory for seller payouts, it should be disclosed clearly before sellers onboard thousands of domains, not after a sale has already happened and the platform owes the seller money.

Sedo's own terms say that "data protection cannot be universally guaranteed" when data is transmitted through public networks, and that Sedo makes no warranty that its services will be "uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free":
General Terms and Conditions

Adyen's own privacy materials say that sensitive personal information such as a passport, ID document or driver’s license may be disclosed to identity verification providers, including credit reference agencies. Their compliance materials also mention third-party identification, screening and verification services, including credit reporting agencies and open banking providers, automated systems such as machine learning models, and analysis for statistical, strategic and scientific purposes. Identity documents and biometric identifiers may typically be stored for 5 years, and business relationship data for 7 years:
Privacy statement on personal data processing - Adyen
Compliance obligations - Adyen

So no, I am not going to feed a third-party financial verification/scoring ecosystem with my passport just to receive a $3,000 domain payout. If their terms give them the legal right to disclose and use this data across such providers and systems, I have to assume they may use that right. That does not motivate me to share my documents. It does the opposite.

Once an ID document leaks, you cannot simply "change" it like a password. The risk is permanent. We still do not live in a digital prison where every marketplace can demand passport scans by default for a basic payout.

This is bad practice and unfair timing.
@Sedo
should either disclose mandatory KYC before sellers invest time listing and verifying domains, or offer a privacy-respecting alternative for legitimate sellers: DNS ownership/control proof, bank beneficiary verification or bank confirmation - without forcing government ID upload as the default path.

Want to build risk models, scoring systems or analytics using my personal documents? Pay me directly for that data. Do not hide it behind forced "seller verification" after my domain has already been sold.

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silentg said:

Seems normal for verification on first sale. Atom, afternic, Dan did verification using id before sending payout.

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rlm said:

if they try and pull that level of verification on me AFTER they buy my domain and before they pay me out, I'll be pissed off.

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