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Craigslist Spambot Attack
A few weeks ago I put up my Jeep for sale on Craigslist.
Almost immediately I became a robot-magnet.
Robots were emailing me to tell me that I asked too little for my Jeep -- if only I clicked this link I could see how much it was really worth.
Robots were emailing me to tell me that there was another vehicle just like mine that was priced lower -- if only I clicked this link.
Geesh.
Yesterday I renewed the ad with a lower price on it and within 5 minutes I got a new email.
"Hey man, do you still have that Jeep for sale?"
I emailed back "yes"
"I think you could get a much better price. Checkout this link"
Spambot.
A couple of hours later, the romantic spambots arrived.
Hows it going? nmy name happens to be CristyI looked at your post (rare jeep scrambler - $7000 (bedford)) on craglist and I'm located in roanoke too! I Wonder if its possible you are
on the dot the form of man I am have strong feelings for.I 24 years old, clearly out ncomputer science school and not nattracted in anything nfast, just a nplayful friend ;).
You can catch my information and a ton of pictures on this date site I'm part of.
Few of them will show up some personal parts :-).
Somebody needs to set up a spambot dating site so all these robots can get together and sell each other stuff.
Finally this morning was yet another one
Hi,Thanks for choosing our craigslist phone marketing program. In the next 2 days you will start getting telemarketing calls from our affiliates with some limited offers!
Maximum number of calls on a daily basis as opted by you :: 39
Preferable time opted by the applicant to get telemarketing calls: 12:15 AM - 5:45 AM roanoke
If you would like to unsubscribe from our list, click here.
You gotta give the last guy credit -- when I see I'm going to get 39 calls a day from somebody, you immediately have my attention!
Sadly, this is crippling Craigslist.I know guys who used to market using CL -- they were making good money everyday. But those days are over as now the goldrush has begun. Everybody and their brother are writing little bots to go out and try to sucker people into clicking a link.
Sigh.
hacker
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Daniel Markham
I have a lot of items offered on Craigslist, and while I've also gotten some of those spam replies trying to send me to another site, many of them are just monosyllabic messages like:
'Hi'
or polysyllabic, such as
'still available?'
I have learned to simply delete the ones that are too short to really be showing any interest in my item, but there are still others who will email you about an item, but never respond to your reply which makes me wonder about them too. It's irritating.
Well - craigslist has developed so much since it's first days that it is hard to follow all the new things. What is the most important for me is it's growing cities-wise. I have to move from time to time (because of my job) to different cities nad craigs list was always helpfull no matter where have I been!