Hello again. This time I will tell you few things about craigslist. When Craig newmark started his classified sale/buy/trade ads website, he didn't think a lot of people will take advantage of it and will scam anyone they can. Craigslist, as of today, is the biggest classified sale/buy/trade ads website in the United States of America and as far as I know this website, you can find there anything. Just name it.
When you sell something on Craigslist, usually you do it in order to sell it to someone that lives around your area and like anyone that wants to sell something, you wanna do it quick and for the best price for you. That's where the Nigerian scam comes into the picture, they contact you via SMS with a U.S.A number (we'll get to that one right away) and they gives you an offer you can't refuse.
They say that they will pay you extra money because they want it shipped to them and they usually have a lots of reasons. Usually they say that they are out of town and they want to send it as a present to a friend/family member/co-worker/employee/donation and anything that they & you can think of. once you agree, they says that they can pay by PayPal, which sounds very attempting because PayPal is supposedly very secure and they ask you for your PayPal address. Now we all know how Paypal works. your username is your email address, so every time you get a payment or something like that you get notified by email - your email.
At that point, after you agreed to accept their terms, you'll get an email saying that you have a payment pending and pay attention to that, the email will start like that "Dear PayPal User". PayPal never turn to their users like that, they will always say your name, like that "Dear Sam Gold". anyhow, this email should make you think that you really have a payment waiting and once you'll send the item they will release your money.
Now the part with the U.S.A number is very easy. They just sign up to google voice and they send you all the text messages from the computer. If you pay attention, the text will start by quoting your ad title. it usually looks like that: "sony camera brand new - $340 - manhattan - is this item still available??" You can see that they just copy-paste it from the Craigslist website and send it to you. they do it because they're sending a lot texts to a lot of people and they just don't wanna get lost between the ads.
Now this is funny - while i'm writing this words I get a text message from them, here is the snapshot :)
That is a live example!
Anyhow, I'm not done with craigslist, I will keep on writing tomorrow. Enjoy the weekend!
They say that they will pay you extra money because they want it shipped to them and they usually have a lots of reasons. Usually they say that they are out of town and they want to send it as a present to a friend/family member/co-worker/employee/donation and anything that they & you can think of. once you agree, they says that they can pay by PayPal, which sounds very attempting because PayPal is supposedly very secure and they ask you for your PayPal address. Now we all know how Paypal works. your username is your email address, so every time you get a payment or something like that you get notified by email - your email.
At that point, after you agreed to accept their terms, you'll get an email saying that you have a payment pending and pay attention to that, the email will start like that "Dear PayPal User". PayPal never turn to their users like that, they will always say your name, like that "Dear Sam Gold". anyhow, this email should make you think that you really have a payment waiting and once you'll send the item they will release your money.
Now the part with the U.S.A number is very easy. They just sign up to google voice and they send you all the text messages from the computer. If you pay attention, the text will start by quoting your ad title. it usually looks like that: "sony camera brand new - $340 - manhattan - is this item still available??" You can see that they just copy-paste it from the Craigslist website and send it to you. they do it because they're sending a lot texts to a lot of people and they just don't wanna get lost between the ads.
Now this is funny - while i'm writing this words I get a text message from them, here is the snapshot :)
That is a live example!
Anyhow, I'm not done with craigslist, I will keep on writing tomorrow. Enjoy the weekend!
Great content, I really enjoyed it.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.empowernetwork.com/dl503inc/blog/craigslist-scams-and-what-you-can-do-to-avoid-being-a-victim Check out this blog on Craigslist Scams, Good stuff here.
thanks! i appreciate it!
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