Craigslist Scams and Frauds

Craigslist can be a very valuable online community for those who are looking for a variety of options including jobs, products, services, personal connections or housing opportunities. Users of this community can find all of the above listed opportunities and can also meet others and network or discuss important issues. However, because Craigslist is an online community there is always the opportunity for scammers and predators to be lurking on Craigslist.
Craigslist has approximately four billion page views per month and approximately ten million visitors each month. The majority of these visitors likely have no harmful intentions but there is a small percentage, as on any online community, who may be seeking to harm others either physically or financially. There are, however, a number of very worth while reasons to use the Craigslist community for finding more information on career possibilities, meeting platonic friends or romantic partners or purchasing products or services.

How to Protect Yourself on Craigslist

Craigslist is not anymore dangerous than other online communities. As with an Internet gathering place, the biggest problem is the ease in which individuals can disguise themselves and trick others into believing they are trustworthy when they are not. This applies both to individuals who seek to physically harm others as well as those who have intentions to scam others out of money or tangible items.
One of the best ways to protect yourself on Craigslist, or any online community, is to safeguard your personal information. This means information such as credit card numbers, bank account numbers, social security numbers and other similar numbers should not be given out unless the individual is positive who will be receiving the information and that it is being transmitted over a secure server. This is important because this information can be used for identity theft or other fraudulent purposes.

Care should also be taken to avoid giving out personal information such as full name, address and phone number. This is especially important because such information could be used by someone with malicious intent to locate an individual. While name, address and phone number are obvious pieces of information which should be safeguarded, it is important to note other pieces of information could be used to find a person. For example a person can be identified and located by supplying seemingly harmless information such as a first name, where high school was attended and year of graduation. Determined criminals can use this information to deduce the last name of the person which could lead to finding their address and using this information to harm or harass the individual.

Finding Items for Sale on Craigslist

The for sale section of Craigslist is the place to find items which are for sale. This section is divided into a variety of different categories. Users can browse through appropriate categories to find other users offering items for sale which may be of interest to them. Those who cannot find an item they are seeking can take advantage of the wanted section to post an advertisement seeking a particular item as well as the price they are willing to pay for this item. When purchasing an item on Craigslist there is always the potential for receiving an item that is not in the condition described in the advertisement. Asking many questions is the best way to avoid this type of problem when making a purchase.

• You need to understand that Craigslist is in no sense associated with any financial transactions that happen between buyer and seller. Craigslist has no right and does not protect your payment under any circumstance, it’s only meant for placing free ads and generating awareness. Never believe on any email that shows official logo of craigslist along with any payment protection services, or money back guarantees as these are all fakes.

• If you ever receive an email which is showing a genuine looking yet fake cashier’s check for an amount to rent an apartment or to buy a product from your website, never ever trust these email check’s as they would fail to clear. Remember, you will be presented with scammed looks and where a 3rd party is always involved. Be alert!

• Most importantly, never agree to a wire transfer that involves, Western Union or MoneyGram type of service providers because even if they say “as per TOS, a confirmation code that is required to withdraw the money is required”, you can consider your cash GONE for GOOD as these claims of confirmation or MTCN codes are all FAKE! These frauds have been reported in countries like Ukraine, Nigeria, UK, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, but in fact can be any country.

• In another scenario, you would find someone offering to wire money or send it by money order. Be careful and never consider this something you can trust as 99.99% times this is a SCAM! Remember, scammer would take all your information like name, address, state/country etc to make sure you get caught in the deal by seeing you name on the check for over $100,000,000.

• Never agrees to any ESCROW type payment option as majority of escrow sites are scammers den. To read more about escrow, you should Google search “fake escrow”.

• If you ever find the seller asking for some partial payment in advance before he/she ships the goods, get ready as this is something tricky for sure. Such cases should be considered as SCAM but then it totally depends upon your gut feeling as well. Trust is what matters the most