Thanks guys, this is obviously working, because the sites are going down as I let people know. The best thing is that Google is caching this thread rather effectively when you search the terms: "Craigslist + Amsterdam + scams". I only wish more people would check this site before they rent on the site - it may save them lots of money and heartache.
I think the more we do this, the more the scammers will get sick of trying on the Amsterdam subsite. If I can achieve this, I'll be quite a happy person.
Here is another site I have found today listed on Amsterdam Craigslist, that look 100% fake:
- [url]
http://www.rentalsservicecity.com [/url] listed under
http://amsterdam.en.craigslist.org/sub/1792882550.html. Notice the very cheap price for the luxury furnishings and the poor website design. This is a dead giveaway for scammers. The URL is also a variation of previous sites I have listed.
This site pops up from time to time. Looks potentially dangerous, I ask the mods to check. Could be a good pro job using fake ads.
-
http://www.guesthousenetwork.com/cl.aspx?ir=206 listed under
http://amsterdam.en.craigslist.org/sub/1792821766.html- [url]
http://www.bidforarental.com[/url] listed under
http://amsterdam.en.craigslist.org/sub/1792819172.html. This site pops up quite often on the Amsterdam site, and the webpage it leads to is low on content and asks you to submit a form - which may be used to aquire the target. This one I would like to be checked out by mods.
The
good news from my extensive hunting today is that most of the scam sites now advertised are broken links (as above post shows), which is great news! And I have noticed less of the scam ads in recent days since this thread was started. Our efforts are working!
The
bad news is that I believe there is good evidence to suggest that the scammers on Craigslist are changing tact when their websites go down. I believe they are now going to create more text based ads without websites that require you to email them off site.
The other thing to remember is, just because the site is down, dosn't mean their dodgy gmail address won't work. Some people will still be scammed this way. If you send them an email regarding reservation, most probably they will make an excuse that the site is down temporarily for maintainance and will still try and scam you without the site.
My advice: If a real person won't skype you over video, where you can clearly see their face; forget it, don't rent it. Ask questions, look for clues of ethnicity and see if they really do live where they say they do. Scammers easily make mistakes. Play to this weakness. Be wary of large deposits. Never go for western Union - that's a scammers giveaway on the site.
-Use
http://www.tineye.com/to see where a photo originally came from. Scammers are lazy by nature. They will usually steal photos from professional sites. Tineye is a reverse image search enegine, which will tell you exactly where the original photo came from when it was first cached online and its original source before it was used by others.
I hope this thread continues and I will endeavour to update it as I see new scammer URLs pop up from time to time. I hope others feel strong enough to help the thread out too.
