Craigslist.com - One Example of How it's a Breeding Ground for Scammers

Craigslist.com is a global online classifieds listing that anyone can use. It is a great source for finding items and services in your local area as well as jobs and housing and everything else that appears in your local Sunday newspaper except at craigslist, it is Sunday every day. It is extremely easy to start an account and anyone can post their classified ads for free. But along with the thousands of legitimate postings, there are many scams in the making and scammers watching for opportunity to knock.

I've been looking for a job in the web development field since recently finishing classes at a technical college. Craigslist has been one of the many sources I have been routinely visiting in pursuit of my new career. I have acquired a couple of the many interviews I have secured through craigslist.com postings and I am currently tutoring PHP/MySQL to a person who was seeking a tutor on craigslist. Having no luck with the interviews and a full-time job yet, I decided to seek more tutoring gigs since that was the only way I had pulled in any income so far since finishing school.

I got myself a craigslist.com account and in a matter of minutes posted an ad stating my availability to tutor a few specific programming languages. My ad had not been live for an hour before I got my first email requesting information about my tutoring services.

He claimed he had a fourteen year-old son that was going to be in my area for the month of October and he was in the process of scheduling activities with the intention of keeping his son's time occupied and his mind busy. He asked for an estimate for three days a week, one hour each afternoon, for the entire month. I'm thinking, Great! There's half the rent! I sent him my estimate and waited for his reply.

This (copied and pasted) email was what I received the next morning.