Taken in by Craigslist Spam

Lincoln Adams | August 24, 2008 @ 1:08 pm

You know the handwriting’s on the wall when a personal ad I respond to on Craigslist turns out to be spam. Whoops. :blush:

Now before you start ragging on me for surfing Craiglist, I was bored, ok? BORED. I was checking out apartment prices and then out of curiousity (and absolutely nothing else) I checked out the personals for my area. That’s when I came across this one:

Okay so here is the deal: I am an attractive 28 year old woman who tends to attract emotionally unavailable men….of course! So basically I am trying this out too see if this “dream guy” actually exists. I would be interested in a man who is attractive (I am a face person) with a great smile/great teeth. I tend to be attracted to men who are not thin or overly muscular. I like a man to have a little meat on his body. I love to laugh and am looking for someone who can make me laugh. I am a born again Christian and would like him to be the same. I love music and love to sing. I also love animals and could not imagine someone not loving them too! I am fairly low maintainance (who also may not be able to spell the word…HAHA). I am somewhat of a homebody and dont need to go out all the time. I am interested in a man who is caring, thoughtful, a “team player”, handy, outgoing, moderately successful, and “real”. I am a very genuine person who’s biggest weakness is my “big heart”. I am thoughtful, caring, and have been told I can “light up a room”. Being my own worse critic I would like to be a little thinner. However, I do have great curves and the softest skin! I came to this website because I really believe that I am a “great catch”. PS) hair is red by choice not by nature!

Seems like a nice enough girl right? So I emailed her and asked her how strong she considered her Christian beliefs to be. I got a response shortly afterwards:

Hi, I got your email and wanted to get back with you to see if you might still be interested. I know you don’t know much about me but you can at least go see what I look like at http://www.eimages.info/barbera21. I posted them on this free site to make this whole “getting to know you” thing a little easier. Just tell me what you think & if you want, a little about yourself and we will go from there. Thank you.

When you click on the link however, it actually turns out to be a phony one and is in fact a redirected AFFILIATE link that takes you to the signup page of a dating site.

This whole time I had been communicating with an automated script that had been set up by an affiliate marketer spammer. :blink:

I should have had the foresight to Google some of the phrases in the Craigslist ad to see if it showed up elsewhere, and sure enough the exact same wording shows up on a profile page at PlentyofFish, only this time she hails from Michigan.

Sigh. And people wonder why I’ve become so bitter and cynical in my old age.

I consider myself to be a somewhat intelligent person, and if I got fooled by this, I’m sure many others have as well, especially as these bottom feeding scum of the earth affiliate marketers get more and more sophisticated in using deceptive methods to make money. Just make sure, if you experienced something similar and you were tricked into clicking on an affiliate link that leads to a signup page, flush the cookies in your browser, so even if you happen to sign up for that very site in question a few months or so down the road, the spammer won’t get credit for it (affiliate links typically insert cookies into your browser that can last several months to over a year. Read my article on affiliate spam for more info.)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be drowning my sorrows in Dairy Queen’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Blizzard. Oh wait, there’s no Dairy Queen around here. Sigh, not even this huh, Lord? :crying:

Tags: affiliate, affiliate links, affiliate marketer, affiliate spammer, christian, craigslist, dating, personal, personals, spam, spammer
Categories: Tangled Webs

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18 Responses to “Taken in by Craigslist Spam”

Conservative Belle wrote a comment on August 24, 2008 @ 03:05:pm
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I know the “real” part made it seem more authentic.

No ice cream places within walking distance? :jawdrop:

Lincoln Adams wrote a comment on August 24, 2008 @ 05:30:pm
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There’s a Carvel nearby, but it’s just not the same. :cry4:

Ryan wrote a comment on August 27, 2008 @ 01:35:am
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Damn dude… this same exact **** just happened to me only the girl’s name was Adria.

eimages.info/adria47

Lincoln Adams wrote a comment on August 27, 2008 @ 01:46:am
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I hoped you flushed your cookies!

Sam wrote a comment on August 27, 2008 @ 10:37:am
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Yeah…great way to start the day huh? Here is the response I got after contacting a similarly deceiving Craigslist ad.

Hey, my X said “nobody will contact you” so you know I’m really happy to hear from you. I don’t want to get my hopes up to much and hear him say “I told you so” so I’m going to put some pictures on a free web-site called eimages.info/jeri46 so you can look at them and see if you are still interested. Let me know and thanks for the ego boost.

- Jeri

Thanks for the ego boost? That’s a cruelly ironic way to end a spam reply to a personal ad.

nightfly wrote a comment on August 27, 2008 @ 12:32:pm
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This whole story makes me want to “flush my cookies.” Spammers are just the worst possible creatures. Scum-sucking little snotrags.

Lincoln Adams wrote a comment on August 27, 2008 @ 01:28:pm
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Wow, I wonder if it’s all the same guy? I actually reported this to eimages.info so at the very least it might stop him from using their URLs.

Domino wrote a comment on September 10, 2008 @ 09:46:am
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Heh, I just fell for this last night. I read a post like this:

Hi. I’m looking for some new fish.

I’m pretty easy to get along with. I like to be active and I like the days where you laze on the couch. I like to do all the little things to make people happy and let them know they are appreciated. I can be sarcastic at times and sometimes I have a “dry” sense of humor. I do love to laugh and I find happiness and laughter to be important.

I’m not a big drinker and not into the bar scene unless I have something to do: dancing, darts, cheating at pool. I like spring/fall, being outside, reading, watching movies and just hanging out with someone fun.

First dates make me overly nervous but I relax pretty quickly. I’m on here to find that extra bit of enjoyment in my life. Hopefully I’ll find it.

If you smoke or if you are looking for a one night stand, don’t email me. If you can’t speak English, don’t email me. You don’t have to be a genius, but at least have a good grasp of the English language.

Sounds good, right? I spent a bunch of time carefully constructing an email that didn’t sound dorky, and went to bed. I woke up, got that same reply you got, except with “babette36″ as the username. I got redirected to the Singles site, and reluctantly signed up because maybe this babette was a user. Well, I signed up, searched users, typed in “babette36,” nothing. Then I googled a bit and came to this blog. How depressing.

Lincoln Adams wrote a comment on September 10, 2008 @ 01:34:pm
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Yeah, the little bastage probably made nice chunk of change when you signed up.

Makes you want to give up and join a monastery. :crying:

Vincent wrote a comment on September 21, 2008 @ 09:25:am
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I click on everything. It is exciting to see whats going to happen next.

Besides, there is no point in living in fear. I met my last girlfriend on craigslist and it lasted 2 years. She was awesome in just about every way.

I also met my own female stalker. And what do you know, I’m still alive. But the real question is… for how long?
According to her, she is just crazy, her last boyfriend is the one who was locked up for killing someone.

The point is get to know someone before they get to know you. Secondly, don’t ever pay for anything, send any money, and try to stay anomonous as much as possible.

Lincoln Adams wrote a comment on September 21, 2008 @ 01:18:pm
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The point is get to know someone before they get to know you. Secondly, don’t ever pay for anything, send any money, and try to stay anomonous as much as possible.

Problem is, it’s gonna be hard to get to know someone if they’re trying to be just as anonymous as you. :blink:

If the Craiglist girl was so great though, how come she’s not with you anymore? Did she finally wise up?

Vincent wrote a comment on September 22, 2008 @ 05:01:am
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Problem is, it’s gonna be hard to get to know someone if they’re trying to be just as anonymous as you.

If the Craiglist girl was so great though, how come she’s not with you anymore? Did she finally wise up?

You are responding to her ad. If she is trying to be anonymous then she is off to a bad start. You have to send the email and she has to respond. I use a dummy email at first contact then I get to know her then she gets my real email. If you need to bail she knows nothing. She doesn’t need to know where you live and you should be unlisted. They like to know something about you before they get too deep but women tend to trust men because men are much more powerful then women physically and women always have to live in a state of trust or distrust.

Did she wise up? I wish that were the case because it would have been easier breaking up with her. She wanted to get much closer and was applying a lot of pressure for various reasons. I felt she could do better than me and since I wasn’t ready I needed to let her find someone else and not string her along. I made this clear when we started dating as well.

Lincoln Adams wrote a comment on September 22, 2008 @ 12:27:pm
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@Vincent: Yeah I use a throwaway account too. I was using that when responding to the ad I mentioned here and it’s now getting spammed to death. Sigh. I wish I had better luck but the girls on there are really off. Maybe it’s my location. Actually I’m pretty sure it’s my location. Everyone here is pretty much out of their minds. :blink:

Kevin wrote a comment on November 28, 2008 @ 02:48:am
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I spam craigslist with affiliates regularly, though I don’t do things the same way these (or most) spammers do. It pisses me off how these guys operate. Now the whole community is aware that atleast %50 of craigslist is all spam. That makes things much harder for me.

What I do (hopefully a would-be spammer will read this) is find actual listings of actual people / jobs / items on sites I am affiliated with. I then link back to the actual object (that really exists). If I spam a job listing and someone follows through and creates a free resume, I make $1 and they ACTUALLY GET THE JOB THEY APPLIED FOR!

Anyways yeah I don’t think I’m such a bad guy but spam is spam right?

Lincoln Adams wrote a comment on November 28, 2008 @ 11:26:am
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@Kevin: If you’re honest about it I wouldn’t mind so much. It’s the outright deception that chaps my @$$. No conscience at all. :mad:

Kevin wrote a comment on December 10, 2008 @ 07:49:am
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@lincoln: Yeah I totally agree. I think a lot of people use the words ’spam’ and ’scam’ interchangeably. It’s the deception you are talking about that causes this.