Over at PC World they have an article about Craigslist and some of the scams that are being used against the unsuspecting. Some of the scams included, which I must admit, were some clever gimmicks. The one I liked the best was the one in which a family put up there dog up for adoption for free. A few days later they were contacted by a woman who had paid $100 for the dog by a scammer. She was able to track down the original owner and told them about paying $100 for the free dog.

Other scams included pyramid schemes of all sorts, bait and switches, and also this con. The people who are buying the item you have for sale, send a check that is over the amount of purchase. When contacted they ask the seller to be reimbursed for the amount over the purchase price. The seller refunds the money only to find out that the original check the seller received is no good.

The article also stated some of the good things that are going on to protect customers who use Craigslist:

To be fair, the highly popular site offers very rational advice on how to recognize and avoid scams. But scammers persist in part because Craigslist is such a go-to place all over the world and partly because victims apparently don’t heed the aforementioned advice.

One fellow even started a recreational blog called Exposing Scam Artists Who Use Craigslist, which is devoted to shining a light on the seedy underbelly of Craig Newmark’s paradise.

So are these cons and scams limited to Craigslist? Of course not. Scams in newspaper ads, eBay and other media have been going on for years. In a society when our banking system is full of fraud, when CEO’s of major companies down right lie, where our politicians have been corrupted by lobbyists, why would we expect anything but fraud?

I am just being facetious. Scams are an every day occurrence on the Internet. I personally do not believe that Craigslist is any worse nor better than any other sites on the Internet.

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

Source.