Craigslist: Is Anonymity Really The Best Policy?

Craigslist is pretty hit-or-miss.  If you’re familiar with the free online community then you know that you can go on it anytime you want to find anything from a free couch to a place to live to a date to a date.

I recently moved out to the San Francisco Bay Area and Craigslist is essential out here.  It’s all but replaced printed classifieds.

My first experience with Craigslist out here turned out to be a sordid mess.  Long story short, I was looking for a living situation with a roommate in the Berkeley area and found what seemed to be a great situation.  Great price, great house, great roommate.  As they say, it was too good to be true.  While the price and the house were great, the roommate turned out to be a complete wacko.  It should have set off red flags when he wouldn’t disclose his full name until I demanded that he do so.  I lived there for exactly one week before packing everything up and moving into a friend’s apartment until I could find another.  But, you live and you learn.

Reluctantly,  I went back on Craigslist.  This time I searched for a studio, just for me.  I found a great place and I’m happy to say that I’m now safe and sound.

With the news lately about the Craigslist killer (I hate to cite Fox News, but here is a link to the article) I’m really beginning to wonder what types of things Craigslist can do to ensure the safety of its visitors.  It’s quickly becoming the hitch-hiking of the 21st century where you just don’t know anything about the person that you are dealing with and its becoming more dangerous every day.

As it stands now, you need only provide as much information as you want in any ad, and you don’t even have to put your “real” email; Craigslist will generate an anonymous email that forwards replies to your ad to your email account.  And while I think that it’s important for the seller to be able to be anonymous (from potentially sketchy buyers) I also think that buyers should have some ability to gauge the sketchiness of the seller.

So, as with many online merchant communities there is a seller rating.  Perhaps this would be an option.  Or, as with CouchSurfing, there are levels of verification.  Perhaps to get a 1-star verification level, a seller or buyer puts in a credit card number that establishes–to Craigslist–the identity of the person.  A 2-star verification could include feedback from buyers/sellers from previous transactions, etc.

The only hinderance to this would be in the sex trade that Craigslist is also known for.  Would people disclose their identity to Craigslist only to post a sexualy explicit ad?  Who knows.  But in the meantime, there is real danger in entrusting your personal information (even your name and address) to random strangers on Craigslist.  My advice would be to make sure that you get full name, address, and/or phone number BEFORE you meet someone for ANY type of transaction found through Craigslist and provide that information to friends along with where and when you’ll be meeting.  That way, if things get sketchy you can say, “My friends have your information and know exactly where I am and what I’m doing right now.”