Tag Archives: craigslist

3 Warning Signs That Someone Is Trying to Scam You

Business, Social Networking, Technology, , , , , , ,

Just recently, I moved across the country from Michigan to Texas. In the process of moving, I started to liquidate a lot of the stuff that I had at he old apartment, including numerous computers and electronic equipment. So I went onto several selling sites to get rid of some of this stuff, and what I discovered is that the trolling scammers are practically everywhere now, and they’re pretty bold and not all that concerned with being caught either. So, having been through a bunch of attempts to scam me, I thought I would point out some warning signs for those who might think that selling something is a good idea, and also make the mistake in believing that the majority of people who respond are actually people you can trust and not annoying asshats that are going to do everything possible to separate you from you money.

1. The Responder in a Hurry: This is usually someone who needs to take care of this transaction right now. Not tomorrow, or even in a couple of hours. He or she needs to take care of this right now and you should understand his or her need for speed because of some really badly doctored rationale that even my college student slackers know better than to attempt to try to get over with me using. One standard one I received no less than a half dozen times was “my son (or whatever relation) is in Iraq/Afghanistan and I’m buying this for him/her, and because he needs it quickly, I need to take care of this right now. Now, if this was the only situation involved, it might be somewhat believable, but quite often it’s coupled with one of the other examples as well.

2. The Paypal Only Guy: One of my stipulations in m ads is that the deal must be carried out in person, and in cash. I don’t take checks (people will offer to pay with a check) or any other weird currency, including “can I trade you something for your item?” Look, if I wanted something else I couldn’t sell, I’d take you up on your offer, but as I’m trying to sell something to get it out of my house, I don’t want your junk, too! Anyway, the paypal guy is the one that says that he has no way of paying you in cash (usually he’s “out of town”) so it has to be done over Paypal. I turn these down each and every time as almost always they are coupled with another one of the scamming activities, which tells me that there’s a lot more going on than just a legitimate exchange over Paypal. I haven’t figured out the nuances of what they do to scam you through that process but as so many scammers have offered to pay me over Paypal, I’m extremely apprehensive. Now, I’ve done business using Paypal in the past, but it’s usually with legitimate businesses or entities I trust, so there’s that.

3. “I’m not local to you” guy: This is the most definite scammer of all the ones I keep running across. Years back, I was scammed by an Ebay buyer who did the infamous “I will send you the money through (name some nefarious process) and I need you to send it to me in some weird place that has no jurisdiction over legal matters, but I promise you it will be all okay.” Yeah, I’m kind of exaggerating about it, but you get the idea. Almost always this “offer” promises to send a few hundred dollars over the cost of the item (to handle my inconvenience) and things start to go downhill from there. Now, whenever someone says “I need you to send it to….” I respond, no, I don’t send anything anywhere. Sorry.

Those are the three main ways that I know a scam is involved. In addition to that, I thought I would mention one of the other problems that occurs with online selling in these matters, and that’s the concept of texting. I can’t tell you how many people have responded to my ads with a text, basically repeating exactly what I wrote in my ad (as if that’s a question somehow). Example: I type in “Selling a computer for $700. Call this number.” The text response is “Selling a computer for $700. Call this number.” Basically, it leaves me just staring at my phone thinking, did I just get contacted by one of those alien races that sends back messages of those they intercepted, convinced that this will lead to a future of conversation between two civilizations in the galaxy? What this has finally done to me is to pretty much give up on any instance that starts with someone who texted me. Almost always, anyone that continues the conversation and says he or she is interested, it ends up in a flake situation where I’m waiting somewhere for the person to show up, and they never do. And I never hear from them again. Now, I’ve gotten to the point where I say “call me when you reach the location” mainly because I don’t believe they’re going to show up to begin with.

In addition, I write in EVERY ad, “do not text me as those do not get answered” and almost always they text me as the only way to contact me. I almost threw my phone into a wall the last time because I stupidly wrote back and said, “DO NOT TEXT ME. PHONE ME INSTEAD.” So he texted me as a response. I ignored him after that, even though he wrote a few times asking for more information.

So, those are my thoughts on scammers. It’s almost made it not worth selling anything online any more. However, a few people were pretty good, but when you’re inundated by stupid scammers, it sometimes makes the whole thing not worth it.

Who Judges When the Government Goes Too Far?

Economics, Politics, , , , , ,

In the northern, midwest part of the country there’s an interesting battle that has been taking place between citizens and government that most people don’t even know anything about. To be honest, I didn’t know anything about this until a colleague of mine was swept up into the bizarre, bureaucratic red tape and forced into some pretty draconian adventures with government and immovable government employees who are incapable of seeing two sides to any issue.

I’ll give you a link to an interesting article that was written in November of 2009. Imagine if you were planning to rent a room out of your home, and you were looking for a specific type of roommate. Well, as my colleague discovered, be very careful about how you designate what type of roommate you’re looking for.

In my friend’s case, he has a large home that costs a lot of money to heat it. Well, he had rented a room in his home to a family that brought in a lot more people than they indicated they were going to when signing the agreement to stay there. As a result, the heat was turned on constantly as there was always someone in the house, and the costs to heat his place went literally through the roof. He found himself almost unable to pay his bills each month because the heat bill was off the charts. And then the family left and decided not to pay the money owed for the heat, leaving him pretty much holding the bag.

So, when he decided to rent out the space again, he put forth a Craigslist ad and wanted to make sure this didn’t happen again, so he said he was only interested in renting to individuals, not families. If you know anything about how the system works from there, you probably know what happened next.

There is a group of people who must literally sit at home and read each new ad that goes up on Craigslist because immediately they contacted the regional branch of the National Fair Housing Alliance, which immediately declared my colleague guilty, requiring a cash payment and then a mandatory attendance at a discrimination seminar, which also cost about $300 and took place in Ohio, even though he lives in Michigan. So, imagine how my friend must have felt when he was now out about $700 for listing a room on Craigslist, when all he was trying to do was avoid someone cranking up the heat and literally forcing him out of house and home.

My colleague tried to get anyone to listen to him, but generally people don’t care. He, and I agree, felt he was railroaded through a system that didn’t even give him an opportunity to present his own side. He was literally guilty without a chance to even prove innocence, which in my opinion, should never happen in this country, but it does almost every day.

Well, something interesting just happened that puts an interesting wrench into his phenomenon. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, a 31 year old nursing student put up an ad on her local church’s bulletin board asking for a “Christian roommate”. As I’m sure you’re suspecting, she was turned over to the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan, a regional branch of the National Fair Housing Alliance. And, of course, the government treated her as a criminal without even considering any other possible circumstances or potential outcomes.

The difference this time is that unlike my colleague, this isn’t something that’s being taken without a fight. Remember, this was a religious act of “discrimination” so it should not come as a surprise that major entities are now responding in anger at a government entity that has no intentions of backing down. Nancy L. Haynes, executive director of the local Fair Housing Center, offers: “Our interest really lies in her getting some training so that this doesn’t happen again.” But as this is starting to become an issue that is getting the attention of some very powerful religious organizations and groups, one wonders if the government is really going to have the last word on this.

And I guess that’s the point of this. My colleague had no recourse, nor did he have anyone that was willing to advocate on his behalf. Basically, he was told he was in the wrong, and that under no circumstance would he be able to respond in any way that was not exactly as the government directed. Well, if the government caves on this, and they most likely probably will once very powerful entities get involved, then it’s important to look at this and start asking some important questions, like:

Is government answerable to the people, or is it as all powerful as it claims to be (at least in this case)?

If a powerful organization can change the dogmatic approach of government, then why isn’t there some kind of recourse for the average American?

And most important: How come these governmental entities do not have oversight that keeps them from acting as judge, jury AND the enforcement mechanism.

No one likes to be railroaded by government, but what’s even worse is being railroaded right before someone else gets treated completely differently because of powerful friends. That’s the origin of the pool corruption, even though most people won’t recognize it when they’re swimming in it.

A Few Comments That Need To Be Said

Economics, Memoirs, Politics, Uncategorized, Writing, , , , , , ,

I thought I would take a moment and just make a few comments that need to be said. Unfortunately, only my stuffed animals read my blog. Well, my stuffed animals and my imaginary girlfriend…from Canada…and maybe that mysterious group of government assassins who have been trying to replace my nonfat milk with soy products, but you probably get the point.

1. If a news article is ever written about me that includes the phrase, “and police searched the wood chipper for signs of the body” then let’s just say that I’ve probably reached a saturation point of relevance and should immediately be put to sleep. Or if police were searching the wood chipper for signs of ME, then let’s just say that I’ve probably got worse problems than anything I might complain about on my blog.

2. I’m convinced Craigslist has no further relevance or importance now that they have removed the adult ads. I’m sorry, but it has no purpose any more. I attempted to put up a personal ad the other day, and it never showed up. The system said I did everything right, but it just never made it to the production side of the house. This has convinced me that all the site was ever really good for was advertising fake personal ads that were really a cover for underage girls selling sex to dirty old men and local law enforcement. Or it was local law enforcement trying to pretend to sell potential sex to dirty old men to put them in jail for wanting sex with underage girls. Or it was NBC trying to snare dirty old men trying to find sex with underage law enforcement officers, or something like that. Either way, underage girls were involved and so were dirty old men, so do the math, and you can probably figure it out. Let’s just shut down Craigslist for good. It doesn’t make sense any more.

3. No politicians are honest. At all. Oh, they talk a good game, but they’re really only interested in pretending to be something they’re not so they can get a job they probably don’t deserve. We should force them to create Craigslist ads instead, and then we can hire the underage girls to run our government. I’m just saying….

4. The “check engine soon” light on your car is a boldface liar. It doesn’t want you to check your engine. It wants you to bring your car back to the dealer so they can charge you $99 to tell you that they need to charge you $299 to replace a sensor that tells you to check your engine soon. What they’re really doing is replacing the light in the sensor so that it will go off two days after you leave the dealer’s shop. Mine did. And now it goes off for a week, goes on for a week, and then repeats the cycle. There’s nothing wrong with the engine, other than it has a faulty sensor that keeps telling me to check the engine soon. Or perhaps my engine is just lonely and wants friends. Maybe I should get a sensor that goes off whenever I’m in public that says “check duane soon…he needs friends”. And then people can pay me $99 for me to tell them they need to pay me $299 so that I’ll tell them to pay me $99 very soon.” I’m just saying….

5. The lives of celebrities aren’t important to the rest of us. It’s one thing to follow the news and be interested in celebrities. It’s another to have it thrown in our faces nonstop as if it’s important. I was tuning into the news the other day, and the point-counterpoint was all about Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. I’m sorry, but there’s the economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the election around the corner, and all sorts of actual news stories that are really news. We really don’t need too political partisans going back and forth about what kind of role model Lindsay Lohan is presenting for young girls who don’t even know who she is because she hasn’t been relevant in about a decade now. Same with Paris Hilton. Since her last actual television reality show, she hasn’t been relevant, significant or even interesting in a very long time now. The people who remember her are no longer capable of being influenced. The ones who are capable of being influenced really have never heard of her and probably think she’s some old woman who their parents might have found interesting. It’s amazing how socially irrelevant celebrities become in a few years.

6. The publishing industry sucks. No two ways about it. I get so discouraged trying to make it as a published novelist, only to find out that Snooki or Tyra Banks is being given a huge publishing contract to churn out drivel that my pack of monkeys (who write Shakespearean sonnets…remember them? The ones who if they write enough gibberish will eventually duplicate a Shakespearean sonnet) could have written just as well. Bah, I get so upset at this sort of thing.

Is Craigslist Really the Enemy They Claim It Is?

Politics, Religion, Social Networking, , , , , , ,

Craigslist recently announced that it is going to be suppressing its listings for sex ads. Instead of the adult listing, it now shows up as “censored” on their site. Public interest groups are now high-fiving themselves because they seem to have won some sort of Quixotic victory that they believe has somehow made things better. Others, of course, still say that it’s not enough and want pretty much the universe when it comes to compliance. I thought it would be interesting to examine this and see what’s really going on.

First off, let’s look at the original problem. Craig Newmark started Craigslist back in 1995 in San Francisco. The idea was to give people a one stop marketplace where they could take care of their every need. You could find an apartment, get a job, sell that old TV you could never get rid of, and yes, even hook up with a potential partner, if that should be your current desire. Not surprisingly, that latter option has opened up all sorts of controversial issues with the online distributor of trade.

In 2002, according to Wikipedia, because of complaints, Craigslist started adding warnings to some of their personal ad areas, such as “men seeking men”, “casual encounters”, “rants and raves”, and “erotic services”. Already, these areas were causing problems with the mainstream segments of the population.

From this point forward, Craigslist has been on the attentions of quite a few public interst groups, and not surprisingly, law enforcement officials.

Up until this time, erotic services were pretty much an entity you had to search through some pretty creative methods, often involving a lot of bait and switch circumstances that one had to navigate solely on the hope that the next time would be better than the last time. Massage parlours were often a place men would go to seek prostitution, and after a lot of false leads and deception, it was not unusual for a man to pay hundreds of dollars to receive absolutely no desired experiences. Some got lucky, but most didn’t, and it was quite often a very discouraging experience.

The Internet was supposed to change all of that. At one’s fingertips was now immediate access to all sorts of information. Craigslist jumped into the game, and people were now following want ads for what they were seeking, and in conjunction with a lot of other erotic services on the Internet, people were actually finding what they were seeking. It was not unusual to see someone’s want ad on Craigslist, then check out the profile on one of the other erotic feedback sites, and then decide whether or not to book a session with that person. Very hard to find erotic services were now being much easier to find because they could now be found on Craigslist. Many people may not realize it, but there are a lot of people out there looking for some very specific types of encounters, and having everything in one place made it much easier for these people to connect.

Well, this didn’t bode well for the industy when there were people who would do everything possible to make sure that such people could never make any such connection. But this probably wouldn’t have been that much of a problem if another entity did not show up, which made things even worse. I’m talking about the scammer.

People may not realize it, but the entity of the scammer has pretty much destroyed every good thing that has ever come across on the Internet. Porn didn’t hurt the Internet, as the fuddy duddies would like you think it did (it actually served to fuel the Internet in its infancy, which is somewhat ironic if you think about it). Scammers did. Most of your email is now pretty much worthless because scammers found out they could profit off of naive people. You are required to buy special software to protect your computer because scammers discovered they could infect your computer just by hosting evil programs on sites where you wouldn’t expect them to be. Ebay used to be a great place to buy things; scammers and thieves put a wrench in the trust factor of that entity. So it is not that much of a surprise that scammers showed up and pretty much destroyed Craigslist.

Some of the biggest crimes that have rallied people against Craigslist have been people who have been cheating other people on the Internet. Call them scammers. Call them thieves. Call them the mob. Or whatever, but it’s this group of people who have caused all of the problems that have made Craigslist the cesspool that it can often be.

Because face it. Women being prostitutes has never caused all that much of a problem, unless you’re Tiger Woods. But people forcing women into prostitution has. Child predators looking for children for sex causes problems. Again, those same people are the ones that make this sort of thing available. These people are criminals who care little for the activity but everything for exploitation and making a quick buck. Unfortunately, they serve to diminish an activity that others might be providing in a more positive way, and unfortunately, there’s often very little way to separate the two.

There are a lot of honest people who are into the sex business who aren’t trying to steal from other people or to hurt other people. They easily get pushed aside whenever the bad class of people show up, and unfortunately that bad class shows up way too quickly and way too often.

All of the issues that have caused public interest against Craigslist have come from these bad elements of our societies. No one rallies around a leader seeking to stop prostitution. But everyone rallies around anyone seeking to stop child exploitation and people who wish to develop nonconsensual slavery circumstances.

This is the problem that Craigslist has fallen into because the owners of that site really didn’t care who was posting on the site. They were more interested in developing a site that brought in money. I can’t see that I blame them, but because of this, they have become the victim of their own success. With great success comes great responsibility, to steal and destroy a great line from Spiderman, and unfortunately Craigslist hasn’t really come up to the plate for the responsibility thing. It played a lot of shell games in hopes of getting people to think it was on the right side of morality, but when it came down to it, it was really only thinking of itself. When the public finally started to become a hammer to be used against them, they censored themselves and then tried to act all First Amendmentish and posted “censored” where they censored themselves.

The fact is: They could have dealt with this a lot easier by actually policing their ads in the beginning to see how much exploitation was going on. Instead, they dropped the ball and lost the whole game. But for lack of stupid analogies, I’ll take this one step further and say that they haven’t lost the whole season yet. They can still do something about cleaning up their site without destroying what they set out to do in the first place.

There are a lot of sex workers who do rely on Craigslist, and unfortunately because of this action, they are forced to start using more exploitive sites out there that are much worse, and that’s sad. Craigslist could step back up to the plate and decide where it wants to be in this debate. It can kowtow to the Bible thumpers and give in completely, like it’s doing right now, or it can bite back and work hand in hand with the communities that have grown up with them, making sure that the evil ones are ostracized, but the ones who are there for the right reasons still have a forum in which to do what they do best.

Unfortunately, it looks like Craigslist may take the easier road because it is filled with fewer obstacles. In the end, it may be a road that leads nowhere.