Text scam

[Jim Barrett]

I have posted a few items on CL recently. On both items someone replied asking me a few questions and wanted me to text them back and they gave me a telephone number, both times out of state. I replied that I don't text and if they wanted to do business reply to my email. No further correspondence. I assume if I had text them back I would have received a plethora of spam on my phone...anyone experience this at all?

Jim

[Wade Lippman]

Probably, but now you will get a plethora of email spam.
If the questions don't make sense, just ignore the replies.
Last fall I was getting 1,500 emails a day offering me misspelled ed treatments.
Then I learned to ignore emails asking if the "item" was still for sale, or changing my last line into a question, and it has become more manageable.

Does anyone actually buy "viagera"? I think they must, or the spammers wouldn't bother; but its hard to believe anyone would.

[ken masoumi]

Does anyone actually buy "viagera"? I think they must, or the spammers wouldn't bother; but its hard to believe anyone would.

the spams I get :Viagra,Cialis,web cam,'female name" wants to have sex,married woman looking for love,online pharmacy,fedex delivery failure,make $5000 /week with whatever,etc,etc.

[Larry Whitlow]

For Craig's list I do not provide my email or phone number in the ad. I ask that anyone interested provide their phone number when responding via CL. CL will send the response to me without revealing my email. If no phone number, then I ignore them altogether. This works well and is something I think I learned here on SMC.

[Dan Hintz]

I just use a disposable email address, and I put it on two lines so bots can't grab it, like this:

MyEmailName
To contact me, send an email the above name @EmailAddress.com

Bots can't handle it, and by the time someone else has had their email address book stolen by malware or some such, my use of the address has long since passed.

[Jim Becker]

I use a "disposable" email address for CL communication, too.

[Craig D Peltier]

They are getting better on CL for sure. They will ask me legitimate questions with some time spent looking at the ad. I do say I will respond to phone numbers only though. I still get the " is this item still fro sale" and a lot of misspellings thats a dead giveaway.
I get mostly casino ads in ym spam for some reason online casinos. I havent been on a online casino sight.

[Darius Ferlas]

For those missing deals for fear that their email addresses will be abused - open a new email account on one of the free sites, such as yahoo, gmail or outlook. Used it only for contacts you are uncertain about, and just for that.

I have been using yahoo mail for the last 15 years or so and I am pleased with the service. You will get spam, but most of it (99.99% I'd say)will go to a predefined spam folder, so you won't have to check whether you need to enlarge anything in your body indeed, or if that prince in Nigeria is serious about the $25M he says he wants to give you.

[Jim Barrett]

For those missing deals for fear that their email addresses will be abused - open a new email account on one of the free sites, such as yahoo, gmail or outlook. Used it only for contacts you are uncertain about, and just for that.

I have been using yahoo mail for the last 15 years or so and I am pleased with the service. You will get spam, but most of it (99.99% I'd say)will go to a predefined spam folder, so you won't have to check whether you need to enlarge anything in your body indeed, or if that prince in Nigeria is serious about the $25M he says he wants to give you.

I use my yahoo email account for CL and other Web stuff....use my @me.com for friends and family...

Jim