Re:Los Angeles - Home of the cheap 11AM quickie
by Iconoclast on Saturday February 14, 2009 @11:20PM
(#481738)
The spam gets verified addresses, and ones of a specific demographic.
The fake postings generally aren't listed as paid services--that is a much smaller pool of potential responders--but instead casual, no strings attached encounters.
Re:Los Angeles - Home of the cheap 11AM quickie
by omarchowdhury on Sunday February 15, 2009 @01:59PM
(#482174)
Really? You and your friends have spent years studying Craigslist spam and have not understood why people are posting them?
Several of my friends and I have been studying this in detail for a number of years now... We still haven't figured out why people post fake posts on Craigslist (especially in the personals section), however it is clear that there must be some incentive, as these spammers(?) have become increasingly elaborate. Many of them are ads, of course, however the amount of information that is exchanged before you learn this suggests that there is some sort of viral spam content harvesting occurring.
The author of this piece might find that to be an interesting follow-on study...