Dangers of buying expired domains?

Can someones domain cause problems with your adsense account?

[Sillysoft]

So I am doing research on things that could help get more traffic to my site and hope to increase my adsense income, I came across a domain that expired. The keywords match up perfectly from the keywords tool that I use and the domain has been registered since 2010. I checked archive.org and I notice the site had a layout with adsense code on it over the past years. To me this seems like a big red flag, why would someone with a very good keyword domain have a site setup this whole time and all of a sudden let the domain expire?

Did the site owner get into legal trouble and had to let the domain go? I have had this happened to me in the past. Or the other part that I fear is, did Google ban this guys account for some reason related to this site? If so, if I take over ownership of the domain, do I risk the same fate? Does Adsense "blacklist" domain names? For example domaina was used for spam and it expired and someone else took over and used it for something else and put adsense ads on it, do they risk some flag in the Google system for the domain? Or do I not need to worry and register the domain and slap adsense ads on it without worry?

Because that is my main concern, I want to take ownership of this domain but I fear Adsense will ban me because the domain might of been banned under a different account.

[netmeg]

They probably won't ban you but they might not show ads on the new domain. If you can make a strong case that you're a new owner with new content you could possibly get that reversed. I don't think they'll tell you ahead of time though so you'll probably have to buy the domain to find out. Otherwise it'd be a pretty big security fail.

[trebuchet]

I acquired an Adsense site years ago, after its owner had been banned for click fraud. The site wouldn't show my ads either, the domain appeared to have been blacklisted, so I gave up on it and shifted the content to another domain. I didn't bother appealing to Google, however if the domain itself has value then it's probably worth giving it a try.

[Sillysoft]

Perhaps the safe bet is to not do anything then. I could register it and own it to make sure no one else gets it, but then I just get nervous someone will come at me legally if someone came at the original owner legally. I have had someone come for me legally in the past for a domain I owned, cant go into details but I did not have a product name or a company name in the url, yet they were able to legally come at me for owning this domain and in the end I had to drop the domain.

[tangor]

If your intent is Adsense, then do a different domain, no matter how attractive the keywords. You'll spend a year (at least) rebuilding any trust and even then might have nothing to show.

OR

Shift the monetization to a different platform. That also works. Those keywords had better be good!

[nomis5]

I let a similar domain expire a year or two ago. It got hit by a penalty but never found out what. It was an emd.

if someone else took ownership now it woul probably do ok with new content. The original content was moved to a new domain and does fine.