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Craigslist And Bots

Very much so. I have a simple bot-check method I use to screen people, and when we do hook up I require photo ID before it goes any further.

Screens out alot of jailbait believe it or not. That is more of a concern than anything else really.

I would probably look into something like that, but only after I've had my first really intimate relationship.

J.


Yeah I heartily discourage you from trying to score a "first time" this way. ;)

Now that I think about it, I don't know. It would be memorable. Well, for one of us. :lol:

J.
 
Craigslist is good for picking up used cheap furniture and stuff like that.

For dating/sex though, don't waste your time there.

Use okcupid, it's free and you're mainly dealing with real people, not scammers.
 
Craigslist is good for picking up used cheap furniture and stuff like that.

That's me. :techman:

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J.
 
I've been patrolling my local Craigslist in spare tiem to remove bots, for a year now. Here is what I have found:


99% of all w4m ads in any given month, are fake (yes, turns out there are some real ones on occassion, but usualy just unattractive overweight girls, or girls who do drugs).


You will NEVER get a REAL response from gmail or googlemail e-mail accounts (that goes for m4m too). Okay, well, out of a 100 you might get one or two.

Just put at the end of your ad a brief line like:

Please put "TrekBBS Craigslist" is the subject line so I know you are nto a bot, otherwise I will delete you

Many Craigslists people do stuff liek that. I will instantly help seperate spammers. 99% of spammers don't read the ad AT ALL. They just send their spam. Don't believe me? Try posting this:

"Hi, I'm a serial killers who has dead bodies in his frezzer. IF you want to die, e-mail me now!"

And watch the replies come in from spammers. However, even with a subject line, you won't stop the persistant spammers who do whatever it takes to try to phish you.

Never put a phone number either. I pity all the folks who do; I bet they get all kinds of spam calls now.

On the annoying opposite side, however, 99% of w4w ads are real. Damnit.


There is also a HUGE number of spam job ads -- including ones that look very real. I'd say in my local job category, about 90% of the monthly ads are FAKE.

And there are about 5% fake ads in the house rentals section.


What Craigslist needs to do is have moderators. I'd get the shit otu of there so quickly the spammers wouldn't know what hit them.
 
I've got a similar system. I block all gmail accounts now, and whatever makes it through my filters I do a simple bot check. Two questions and a fake picture. 99% of the times they reply back with a canned message and a link to a site asking for either SSN or CC numbers.


Been trolling four hours now, Seriously I've gotten close to 7,000 replies and they are all bots. Someone is targeting CL big-time today and it's really starting to piss me off. The people who run my email are prob'ly looking at the incomming traffic and going "What the hell?!"
 
Important thing to do is never reply to a fake e-mail or a suspicious one, otherwise they'll have your real e-mail and not that Craigslist one, then you're fucked.

I remember years ago Yahoo used to be the preference of spammer e-maisl, now it's gmail, to the point where what was supposed to be this great new e-mail from Google, has become a fucking joke.
 
It sucks, too, because my email account is Gmail. It has been the best email account I've ever had, but the spammers have taken it over, too! :mad:

J.
 
It sucks, too, because my email account is Gmail. It has been the best email account I've ever had, but the spammers have taken it over, too! :mad:

J.

Gmail is fine, as long as when you're responding to ads you sound like a real person, which is rather easy to do.
 
Important thing to do is never reply to a fake e-mail or a suspicious one, otherwise they'll have your real e-mail and not that Craigslist one, then you're fucked.

I remember years ago Yahoo used to be the preference of spammer e-maisl, now it's gmail, to the point where what was supposed to be this great new e-mail from Google, has become a fucking joke.

That's why I set up a yahoo account for CL stuff. I can then use my real email account if I want to a specific reply.
 
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