Craigslist - Home of Spams and Scams

As a supporter of our freedoms in this country, I always like to take time out and research new sites and report on them as objectively as possible. But there is one site I must inform all of you readers about: Craigslist.org.

Very popular to advertise and sell items locally, Craigslist has currently been the dumping ground of a lot of individuals and companies who are as devious, dubious and unreliable as it stands. There is an inordinately high amount of trickery and deception if you are not careful. Two sections I will discuss - Personals and Resume - are rife with potential fraud and abuse.

Personal. In November of last year I decided to jump on the bandwagon and create a video report (among others) of my first-hand account of signing up on an "alternate" dating, or commonly called a "sex" site, and reveal my findings of this research. I have yet to complete my report for publication but I entered into three of these sites, looking for answers as to how and why people would want to hook-up with other adults and have adult-only fun. Craigslist has a couple of sections on their site in their Personals category regarding this issue.

From the months of January through March 2009, I perused the Women Seeking Men section, tried to contact potential individuals for further information and research but came to a disheartening conclusion before I crafted my own test posting near the end of March: the contacts don't work or exit.

Virtually all of the ads from women were nothing but fantastic creations by other web sites promoting their own hook-up businesses. When clicking on a potential local contact, almost immediately you are given something in your Inbox which bears only a few "personal" words by the faux person and a link to click on. These are called "bot" or "robot" automatic responses. They're promotional scams but scams nevertheless advertising seemingly legitimate online sites.

Disguised to promote a service or site brand, all of these ads require you to sign up for their paid service. Yes, PAID service. If anyone needs a warning about the legitimacy of Craigslist's personals listings, you are hereby warned. Even my own test posting was taken too seriously by an interested party that I have since exposed as a fraud.

As for the Resume listing, it is even worse. For the past three months that I have kept my own resume posted on Craigslist, the following analysis and final say on the subject is this: NEVER post your resume here.

Tons of spam and scams abound. Fake companies, fake individuals, even seemingly legitimate corporations will take advantage of you. And you will get a steady stream of bogus companies and job offers. I urge anyone who is tempted to place their resume here to post it on job sites like careerbuilder.com, Monster.com, or Jobs.com.

I was stunned over the daily influx of scams being promoted: an apartment cleaner, nanny/day caretaker, a drop-ship employee, accounting/financial scams, even job opportunity scams from out of state or out of country. Plus, when looking at the From and To headings, you will find it says either "undisclosed recipients" or even another person's e-mail and not your own in the To box. There was even one person who had the audacity to say they were from Star buck (notice the space between the word!).

But when it does state your actual e-mail address you will find the e-mail itself is not very professional - they follow no business writing style, there are mis-spelled words, poor grammar... Avoid posting any resume here or you will be constantly disappointed. No one in their right mind should post any legitimate information or you might have your identity stolen as well. I have been asked to visit sites where they ask for "other" needed information before the company can actually hire you and all of them ask the same things that proper employers aren't supposed to request - such as your age, your family and criminal background and financial information. This is called phishing, the new online scam.

For more than a decade, award-winning journalist Dan Tynan has written about scams and scammers in his career. He is the author of Privacy Annoyances (O'Reilly Media, 2005). As online retail sales increased in 2004, so did the number of people with domain name registrations at 64.5 million. Sales may have increased then but so has Internet crime. Nigeria scams, people claiming they're from the FBI or IRS, gifting scams, Tynan blows these myths out of the water.

In Mr. Tynan's Top Five Online Scams at http://pcworld.about.com/news/Mar082005id119941.htm, he relates the truth on what's out there and what you should look out for. Read his article and be prepared for an eye-opening piece that's sure to keep you informed.

If you want to inform yourself more fully about the common scams spreading the Internet, onguardonline.gov is a resource to recognize the ten common spam scams. Even craigslist.org/about/scams.html is also another resource. Scambusters.org is also a huge, invaluable site to learn from as well as stopscammers.com.

Remember, folks, if it sounds too good or too easy to believe it most likely is.