Doing this isn’t rocket science, so here is my current list of sites.  Of course, I have devised a way of automating the search process and I’m not going to tell you how I do that.  Just remember, you must document your search method and the results properly if this is could end-up as evidence.

Censorship: You be the Judge

Google Ad-sense sent an automated notice that their machines were going to stop serving ads because I listed the sites that we often search for telephone numbers as explained above.  Of course machines can’t read, but they can find links. Now Google is censoring content because they don’t like to place ads on anything that has links to sites that they don’t like, in this case so-called ‘adult content’.  I can understand not wanting to be involved in promoting pornography or the sex trade, but this is only a machine telling me what to write and there is nobody to talk to and no living person at Google ever read this article.

Remember all of the reports on the news about Nigerian princes with extensive bank accounts. Poor grandmothers and unsuspecting marks across the Internet were duped into wiring money into an account in hopes of striking it rich.

While these types of attacks have decreased over the past couple of years, there are still people out there trying to fool you into wasting your money. They might not be as obvious as the Nigerian prince example, but the new breed of scammers seem to be incognito graduates of online doctorate programs in influence and manipulation.

Money Schemes

Scammers are tricking intelligent people into giving up there hard earned money for absolutely nothing in return. These scams usually include anonymous wire transfers and pre-written checks to PO Boxes and other non-permanent addresses. Besides the prevalent Nigerian prince scam; Craigslist con-artists are masters of not living up to promises and requesting money up front.

Make sure to never give your credit card number out via email, don’t send personal information about your family members, and don’t ship any of your possessions to strangers without receiving payment up-front.

Job Schemes

Craigslist has become an efficient way to find local work, jobs, and careers from local businesses. By using the job board offered on their website, you do not have to wade through endless corporate questionnaires or have your resume left in an inbox for a month before a corporate recruiter calls you. With the ease of use of the job board, there are plenty of people who want to take advantage of you.

Some people might be claiming to offer freelance work, but will want samples before giving you any compensation. Some companies take these so called “samples,” and use them in order to profit their own business. According to PC World, there was a man who manipulated 79 people into working a fake job, with seemingly real work, all in order to impress a woman.

There are multi-level marketing companies all across the country, and even Europe, which promise entry-level management positions, but suck you into door-to-door sales. These organizations act like a gigantic pyramid scheme, go under the guise of marketing firms, and use cult-like tactics to keep you in the organization.

These schemes are unfortunate because otherwise willing and skilled people are deterred from using Craigslist as a job source.

How to Stay Safe on Craigslist

Craigslist’s own personal safety website outlines several tips for staying safe while using their classified advertising service. Make sure you are able to meet with the people you are dealing with locally, and meet in a public place like a restaurant or large office. Tell someone you are going to meet someone online, or have a friend join you. Also, make sure to receive payment before shipping valuables, or simply have people come get it themselves.

The most important rule to remember about Craigslist is that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Why would a member of the Nigerian royal family want to share their wealth with some anonymous bloke from Yonkers, New York or East York, Ontario.

Search Tempest seems to work well when searching for counterfeit goods, stolen items, and telephone numbers.

The following represents my usual process before resorting to confidential resources.

• Check the email address in Google. Use it as a reverse email search. You may find an associated cell phone number that is still in service.
• Do reverse email search using Pipl.com this finds content that other web crawlers miss. Go to Pipl, click the “Email” link, enter the email address. The results may display online sites and documents where that email address appears and you may find an associated telephone number at one of those sites.
• Kgbpeople.com and SocialMention Search in social networks using Kgbpeople. Enter the email address in the “Name:” field at the top of the page, select the country in the pull-down menu and press the “Search” button. Select one of the four tabs at the top of the screen — Social networks, Search engines, Photo and video, or Personal — then review the results for a cell phone number associated with that email address.  Do a similar search using SocialMention.
• AllofCraigs and Search All Craig’s Search Craigslist ads. It’s a handy place to conduct a reverse email search. Enter the email address in the field and press the Hopefully, you will find some ads that reveal a phone number connected to that email address.

Censorship: You be the Judge

Google Ad-sense sent an automated notice that their machines were going to stop serving ads because I listed the sites that we often search for telephone numbers as explained above.  Of course machines can’t read, but they can find links. Now Google is censoring content because they don’t like to place ads on anything that has links to sites that they don’t like, in this case so-called ‘adult content’.  I can understand not wanting to be involved in promoting pornography or the sex trade, but this is only a machine telling me what to write and there is nobody to talk to and no living person at Google ever read this article.

Craigslist does offer very sensible advice on how to recognize and avoid scams. The problem is many victims apparently don’t heed the advice. Don’t want to become one of these poor schmucks. Then pay careful heed.

Exposing scam artists who use Craigslist

I created this blog site to expose the scam artists, crooks, and their tactics that prey on honest hard working people on craigslist. I encourage you to share your stories and experiences with other people so that we may better serve the craigslist community, by making it a safer place.

AllofCraigs is another CraigsList search engine built on a Custom Google Search.

It also  allows you to query specify all Craigslist and  other ad sites and get results pulled from a custom Google search.

A Twitter stream tool allows you to see tweets that contain the word Craiglist.  However, you also get Tweets that  just mention the word Craigslist not ones with links to ads.

A search for the words toronto incall returns  many, many hits in this fast changing type of ad, while Search All Craig’s returns none. This might be useful for searching Craigslist for telephone numbers. My early searches for telephone numbers seem more successful using this than Craigslist itself.

I can’t really recommend this thing. If you do a search for the words toronto incall it returns only 2 hits. If you go to the Toronto erotic services section and do a search for  incall you get over 1200 results. The flaw is the rapid change that occurs on Craigslist and how Google updates its index. This isn’t the tool to use if you are looking for a telephone number used in a Craigslist ad. The search  site:craigslist.org “search terms” searches has the same flaw. However, in the case of site:craigslist.org toronto incall, this search string provided more results than Search All Craig’s (9 with this search and 2 with Search All Craig’s).