4 ms·
An obvious red flag for me is always an opening message with "I'm interested in X", where "X" is verbatim copied off the title of the ad.
by 3np 5y ago
An obvious red flag for me is always an opening message with "I'm interested in X", where "X" is verbatim copied off the title of the ad.
- Loughla 5y agoThe problem with that (at least in what I've sold online), is that older/elderly people tend to copy and paste into their messages or type it out verbatim. Again, maybe that's specific to woodworking tools and supplies, because those people tend to skew older, but I have legit asked 4 or 5 buyers, this year alone, if they were bots because that is literally their first line.
- 3np 5y agoI wonder if there is any causality here and if so, what the chicken and egg is here... Do old people mimic the scammers who text them or did scammers start mimicking old people?
- alias_neo 5y agoMy dad would 100% start a transaction like this. For bonus points he might even write the X in ALL CAPS.
- aeorgnoieang 5y agoI think I do that, on the off chance that a person might have multiple listings, and my general preference for precision. I probably also figured it'd be easier for them to know what I was referencing if I used the exact same text.
- handrous 5y agoProminently featuring the exact text of my listing title has, so far, been a 100% perfect match for scams, for craigslist ads. Doesn't quite catch all of them, but the ones that do that have always been attempted scams.