Rant: Craigslist & Spam
Posted by Philippe on October 19, 2006
OK. Craigslist. AWESOME concept, great implementation, excellent place to find things…
In theory, it has this capability where your email address will be anonymous so that you can post without spam spiders finding your address and then using it for their own nefarious means. Its supposed to cover your tracks and people send to jobs-424183723@craigslist.org which then forwards to your home address. Sweet! This means I can post job openings, resumes, ads, etc without having to worry about Mr. Spider running across my email and locating it.
WRONG.
I have an email address.. we’ll call it jobs@smallbuzinesscompany.com for fun. So I post with jobs@smallbuzinesscompany.com, mark it anonymous, and wait for the resumes. Do I get resumes? Sure. I get a couple. Excellent. Craigslist is doing what its supposed to be doing. Perfect.
A week later. Ms. Kaitlin sends me an email.
“hunggry mouthful of speermnot” as the subject line.
On my jobs@ email account. That isn’t a member of ANY mailing list, ANY clubs, or ANY outside location other than my website (which has been up for six months without gaining spam) and Craigslist as an anonymous poster.
Coincidence?
