Should Escrow.com be required to provide the address of a domain buyer to the seller?

Today popular domain name blogger Konstantinos Zournas complained on Twitter about an issue he was having with Escrow.com, here’s the tweet:

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I’m no lawyer so I don’t know if Escrow.com is legally required to provide this kind of information however Konstantinos did bring up European Union laws in a follow-up tweet about the situation.

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Escrow.com did follow-up at the end of the string indicating that the buyer did agree to allow them to disclose the buyers address and it was sent to Konstantinos.

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So here’s the question, should Escrow services like Escrow.com disclose the address of the buyer to the seller or should they follow the process that Escrow.com is now where they ask for permission directly before disclosing. I guess I can see both sides of the story here. On one hand, as a seller I definitely would want to know the details of who I’m selling to, I don’t know the value of this domain but if I sold someone a $200,000 name I’d probably be pretty concerned if they tried to hide their address from me.

At the same time I can understand Escrow.com’s predicament here since they are trying to facilitate the transaction and an address might be considered confidential? Still, it feels to me like if you’re going to share someone’s name and email, why would the address be off limits?

Like I said above though, I’m no lawyer, and I have no idea what kinds of restrictions Escrow services have on how they handle information like this. It’s hard to know whether this is a decision that Escrow.com made themselves or a regulation they are abiding by. I do know as a domain seller I’d be pretty nervous selling to someone that wouldn’t share their address since this goes on every contract I’ve ever seen.

What do you think? Was Escrow.com in the wrong here or are they just playing by the rules?

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton