Craigslist puts in a lot of effort to warn people about common scams, yet the problem persists in the high-value categories. This is especially true of rentals -- I get a Google Alert every week of Craigslist-related crime appearing in news reports, and half or more are rental scams. How can people miss the warnings and get conned? Part of the reason relates to smart social engineering, as the OP suggested -- girls, convincing sob stories (active duty military deploying overseas is a common hook), well-written emails, great prices that are almost too good to be true. The scammers are constantly running tests to see what works best and then applying them to multiple areas. But the other thing is the nature of buyers, who may only come to Craigslist once every few years and may assume that because their last experience turned out good, their next one will, too.
On the spam front, "flagging" is one of the main weapons CL uses to fight things like overposting, top-posting, miscategorized posts, etc. Unfortunately the system has broken down in many markets. Check out some of the cities in Western Canada, which are overrun by spam (see "Craigslist Canada: Ticket spam, giant markets and dead areas" http://invantory.com/2012/04/craigslist-canada/ ). Dealers and spammers using manual or automated means simply overwhelm the categories, and there aren't enough active flaggers to mark the violators -- or people have simply given up.
Classified marketplaces really interested me, and if anyone wants to talk about Craigslist or mobile classifieds, I can be reached via the websites listed on my HN profile.
Flagging can be unrewarding to the flagger as well. If I'm hunting an apartment deal, email 100 ads, determine 70 are fake, flagging the fakes to remove the ads I already know are bad is just going to bring in more competition for the places I want. A lot of fakes reuse something, like pictures or contact information, etc. so you can identify their future posts as well.
The real world rewards are huge. I know people who have sublet a place worth $5k USD/month from someone for $2.5k USD/month because they hunted for a deal and found someone who had to go move and take care of their parents ASAP and that person didn't have any other immediate takers pop up so quick.
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My company is creating a mobile classifieds platform. On the company blog, I've spent some time analyzing Craigslist scams ("Five Craigslist rental scams" http://invantory.com/2012/04/craigslist-rental-scam-crisis/ ) as well as spam ("Craigslist 'by dealer' categories and dealer spam", http://invantory.com/2012/04/craigslist-by-dealer-categories... ).
Craigslist puts in a lot of effort to warn people about common scams, yet the problem persists in the high-value categories. This is especially true of rentals -- I get a Google Alert every week of Craigslist-related crime appearing in news reports, and half or more are rental scams. How can people miss the warnings and get conned? Part of the reason relates to smart social engineering, as the OP suggested -- girls, convincing sob stories (active duty military deploying overseas is a common hook), well-written emails, great prices that are almost too good to be true. The scammers are constantly running tests to see what works best and then applying them to multiple areas. But the other thing is the nature of buyers, who may only come to Craigslist once every few years and may assume that because their last experience turned out good, their next one will, too.
On the spam front, "flagging" is one of the main weapons CL uses to fight things like overposting, top-posting, miscategorized posts, etc. Unfortunately the system has broken down in many markets. Check out some of the cities in Western Canada, which are overrun by spam (see "Craigslist Canada: Ticket spam, giant markets and dead areas" http://invantory.com/2012/04/craigslist-canada/ ). Dealers and spammers using manual or automated means simply overwhelm the categories, and there aren't enough active flaggers to mark the violators -- or people have simply given up.
Classified marketplaces really interested me, and if anyone wants to talk about Craigslist or mobile classifieds, I can be reached via the websites listed on my HN profile.
Flagging can be unrewarding to the flagger as well. If I'm hunting an apartment deal, email 100 ads, determine 70 are fake, flagging the fakes to remove the ads I already know are bad is just going to bring in more competition for the places I want. A lot of fakes reuse something, like pictures or contact information, etc. so you can identify their future posts as well.
The real world rewards are huge. I know people who have sublet a place worth $5k USD/month from someone for $2.5k USD/month because they hunted for a deal and found someone who had to go move and take care of their parents ASAP and that person didn't have any other immediate takers pop up so quick.