Friday, February 29, 2008

Craigslist Rolls Out new "Phone Verification" Policy

Many Craigslist User's are reporting the rollout of a strict new policy regarding Cell Phone verification before being allowed to post in certain sections. Posters to the "Erotic Services" section report that they are unable to post without first providing a phone number.

Telephone Account Verification

We need you to provide a valid, working phone number so that we can verify your account.

To help enforce our terms of use, craigslist now requires an account verified by phone for posting in certain categories. Terms of use violations will be subject to account suspension and blacklisting of the phone number used to verify the account.

Shortly after entering your area code and phone number below, you will receive an automated phone call during which an authorization code will be provided to you.

Enter this authorization code on the next page, and your account will be verified.



While this will most definitely reduce the amount of spam on Craigslist, the question remains to what effect user's will relinquish personal information to a site that has been empowered mainly by it anonymity. With the paperwork trail that comes with phone numbers, those who may otherwise post will think twice.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

They are asking me today and I only post in the skilled trades section!

Anonymous said...

I was asked also, and this was for posting in Computer Services. What gives?

Anonymous said...

I post my repair service on Craigslist which is now officially a piece of crap. Craplist, thats it. I bet Craigslist is trying to charge for ads and they are pissing off everyone first then they will begin charging for ads, and then cl will die on the vine.

I think the phone verification system will greatly reduce the amount of traffic on cl. I think Craig made a huge mistake with this program. I think it will make CL much less popular and in small towns, traffic will die off.

Anonymous said...

It is not just phone verification in the "erotic" section of Craigslist that has been effected by this policy, but all the services now have been effected, e.g. Labor/Move , skilled trade, household,computer, etc..

For individuals who needed to post several ads per day to compete with the incredible number of ads that are posted for labor and household services offered, and who were not spammers, this policy is a disaster. This policy not only cuts out the honest individual workers ability to compete, the same workers who get part time work from their ads, but it allows the commercial spammers to control the board using deceptive methods to bypass the verification system, e.g. getting multiple yahoo accounts and using friends home phone numbers to retrieve the verification code number. All in all this phone verification system has "Nothing" to do with abuses in the "erotic" section, or it would have been dealt with in the erotic section, that was an excuse to implement the phone verification in additional sections of craigslist to bolster the demand for paid advertising and to destroy the privacy of the individual. There could have been an easy method to halt the abuses in the erotic section simply by adding additional rules that would have resulted in the elimination of that section. However it became a convenient opportunity to exploit.

Anonymous said...

This is kind of crappy, in a way, but I guess it will reduce the amount of spam posts on Craigslist. So many people post ads multiple times that it makes it hard for people who are using the system fairly to get clients or find an employee.

Anonymous said...

Need to post more ads in the services section, but don't have enough phone numbers?

Here's what you need to do:

1.) Remember, the landscape has changed in services. You don't need to top post multiple times per day in hundreds of cities.
2.) Choose your top performing cities and focus your marketing there.
3.) Acquire the appropriate number of accounts for your needs (1 post every 48hrs per account is optimal)

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http://www.ezadsuite.com/PhoneAccounts/Trinova

Unknown said...

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MDI said...

Save some money and Cut out the midle man. These are the guys actually doing the verifing.And the accounts are set up to redirect to the email of your choice.
http://www.admanunlimted.com

MDI said...

oops...
http://www.admanunlimited.com

Anonymous said...

You can get around this by using the site athttp://letscall.me

you can receive calls anonymously without giving out your phone number

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Anonymous said...

Agh! Both Richmond AND WDC are requiring Phone verification for ALL postings. Gone are the days of the casual want-ad post

Anonymous said...

Oh, my-I just found this out before posting-It's so annoying! Even further, once you set up a verified account, you can't post more than once in a single section within a 48 hour period!
I post in Pets and Rants&Raves, which is a chat room/thread of sorts. How can R&R carry on it's threads if a poster is allowed only one post every 48hrs?
Very annoying. No more R&R debates:(

Craiglist PVA said...

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