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New York orders Craigslist to remove ads for fake COVID-19 treatments
It's no secret that coronavirus-related scams are flourishing (the FCC put out a guide to avoiding them), and New York is now applying legal pressure to stop them. State Attorney General Letitia James has ordered Craigslist to "immediately remove" ads that either sell fake COVID-19 treatments or engage in price gouging on items like hand sanitizer. James also asked Craigslist to outline all its "proactive efforts" to spot and clamp down on these ads.
Craigslist only took 11 years to make its own iOS app
Considering the App Store has been around for 11 years and Craigslist for 13 years before that, it's astonishing the bastion of online classified ads hasn't bothered to create an official, first-party iOS app until now. It just hit the App Store and, like Craiglist's website, it's pretty straightforward with a simple design.
DOJ busts gang for allegedly selling fake cars on eBay
The Department of Justice has unsealed information about an organized crime ring that used online sites like eBay and Craigslist to defraud people. 20 people, including 16 people from Romania and Bulgaria, stand accused of RICO, wire fraud and money laundering offenses, as well as identity theft.
Suicide, violence, and going underground: FOSTA’s body count
Maybe you've noticed a sudden flood of updates to Terms and Conditions recently from the internet services you use. A close look at those agreements will show that many are GDPR related, but some are most definitely not. Welcome to the culture of fear, ushered in by the passing of FOSTA-SESTA.
Congress just legalized sex censorship: What to know
One week ago, the worst possible legislation curtailing free speech online passed and sex censorship bill FOSTA-SESTA is on its way to be signed into law by Trump. Hours after the announcement, everything from the mere discussion of sex work to client screening and safe advertising networks began getting systematically erased from the open internet. Thousands — if not hundreds of thousands — of women, LGBTQ people, gay men, immigrants, and a significant number of people of color lost their income. Pushed out of safe online spaces and toward street corners. So were any and all victims of sex trafficking that law enforcement might've been able to find on the open internet.
Craiglist blocks personal ads to protest anti sex-trafficking law
The passing of the controversial, ham-handed Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA-FOSTA) has prompted Craigslist to close its personals section. The bill is designed to punish websites with criminal sanctions if they are seen to be facilitating sex work, as a personals ad could be. Unfortunately, the legislation is drawn so poorly that any website that connects people could be targeted. Which is what has prompted Craigslist to act, with all links in the area now pointing to a short statement.
Craigslist sellers can now specify if they accept bitcoin
Next time you sell old furniture, you can use it as a chance to add more bitcoins to your stockpile. Craigslist now gives you a way to specify in your listing whether you accept virtual currency. Blockexplorer News has noticed a new checkbox option that says "cryptocurrency ok" when you create a new ad, which does make sense for Craigslist transactions. Since the website doesn't vet buyers or sellers, paying with virtual coins means you won't have to worry about getting fake bills and bounced checks, and you won't have to give a total stranger your bank details for payment.
Facebook opens up its Craigslist-like section to retailers
Facebook is trying to figure out what people want from Marketplace, so it's going to add a bunch of new products from real vendors in order to suss that out. "We'll kind of look and see what's popular, what people want to engage with," Deb Liu, Facebook's head of Marketplace, told Recode, "So if people are searching or looking for something, we want to make that available to them."
Facebook's revamped Marketplace goes after Craigslist again
Last year Facebook relaunched its online classifieds, Marketplace, as a way to take on Craigslist. Now the social network is giving the system a makeover, TechCrunch noticed. There are dedicated sections for categories of for-sale items including tools, baby-and-kids items and even mobile phones. Oh, and there's one each for garage sales and housing -- two of Craiglist's most popular categories.
Facebook opens Marketplace to take on eBay and Craigslist
If you visit Facebook today, the chances are that you'll come across someone trying to sell something. It could be a friend looking to make some money from an old smartphone or a thousand-strong parenting group looking to trade items for their little ones. Facebook has slowly introduced features to make it easier for people to list their items, but today the company has launched Marketplace, a new way for users to "discover, buy and sell items" with other people in their area.
This Redditor stumbled upon a hidden porn game on an '80s Mac
Think about the last time you bought something off of Craigslist. Was it a computer? Did you happen to find anything ancient and awesome on it? Most might shudder to think what could be procured from older tech these days, but one Redditor lucked out when they purchased an old 1980s Macintosh SE to flip into a working computer.
Senate holds Backpage in contempt in child trafficking probe
The Senate has unanimously voted (96-0) to hold Backpage, a classified ads website, in contempt of Congress. See, Homeland Security's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued subpoenas last year, asking Backpage for extensive documentation on how it screens the ads people post. The company, however, only shared general documents that didn't contain the information the subcommittee needed. Lawmakers are investigating the website due to allegations that it allows child sex-trafficking ads to go through. Further, lawmakers say its screening practices even help traffickers avoid prosecution by editing ads and using buzz terms like "fresh" to indicate underage prostitutes.
NYU says Craigslist sucks at spotting fake rental listings
Researchers at New York University claim that Craigslist has a serious problem identifying fraudulent listings. After digging through two million of 'em, a team from the Tandon School of Engineering thinks that the site misses anything up to 55 percent of scam entries. They normally work by offering a juicy property for rent, but forcing users to undergo a credit check or pay cash straight to see the full listing. Naturally, both are designed to separate would-be renters from their money, but apparently they're pretty easy to spot. Despite this, Craigslist stands accused of leaving fraudulent entries linger online for anything up to 20 hours.
Police stations are becoming common Craigslist meetup locations
A good rule of thumb when meeting strangers off of Craigslist is to meet in public places. But you know what's safer than that when your gut's telling you to be extra careful? Meeting in police station lobbies. The Seattle Police Department is encouraging people to use its station lobbies as meetup, pickup or drop off points for Craigslist deals. Clean, legal ones only, of course. It's not the first state to offer its law enforcement HQs as a safe place to meet, though: this is a growing trend across the US started by the Chicago police. Aside from Seattle, Beaufort, Boca Raton, Columbia, South Carolina, Missouri and Virginia Beach have also followed Chicago's lead. Police stations, by the way, are open 24/7. So you can snap up even good deals posted at night without having to worry about getting kidnapped, raped or murdered. [Image credit: Wikimedia]
Facebook's going after eBay and Craigslist with group-based selling
Facebook likes to experiment with little projects that could, someday, be as popular as Poking and Graph Search. One such project is enabling selected users to sell their unwanted items on the social network, in a move that'll surely strike terror into the hearts of the folks over at Craigslist and eBay. New Zealand-based developer Indy Griffiths took to Twitter to reveal that he'd been given the option to sell an item to a group, with the button nestled next to the write post button.
Craigslist quietly switching to OpenStreetMap data
TPM is reporting that Craigslist is embedding maps on its housing adverts from crowdsourced mapping site, OpenStreetMap. While the listings-site isn't boasting of the change, it's the fourth major name to dump Google's service after Foursquare, Wikipedia Mobile and Apple. While Mountain View has cut the cost of accessing its Maps API, it looks like budget-conscious corporations may be looking elsewhere.
You're the Pundit: What's the best way to unload your old iTech?
When it comes to forecasting the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is trade-ins (all prices quoted are as of this writing). With Amazon offering US$297 for a 16GB Wi-Fi iPad versus Gazelle's $250, it's worth shopping around for the best trade-in offers. And yet, service, reliability, and name brand recognition seems to play an important role in the who-do-you-trust game. Are you in the market to sell your iPad? Who have you used and was your experience positive? You tell us. Place your vote in this poll and then join in the comments with all your insight. %Poll-73984%
Daily iPhone App: CraigsPro+
I'll admit it. I do a lot of my shopping on Craigslist. It's a fantastic website to find phones, car tires, appliances, furniture and more. I'm a patient buyer, though, and wait until I find an excellent deal. Searching for the lowest price is not that hard when you use an app like CraigsPro+. CraigsPro+ is one of several Craigslist apps in the App Store. Like the others, it lets you search Craigslist, but it has several features that set it apart from the competition. First, it lets you search multiple Craigslist locations. I live about an hour from NH and can easily search listings for both Maine and NH. I can also add in Boston, if I wanted to travel that far. If you're traveling, you can let app use your GPS location to find the appropriate Craigslist site. CraigsPro+ also lets you setup "search agents". As their name implies, search agents will regularly ping Craigslist for your search term. When it finds a listing that meets your criteria, the app will send you a push notification. This quick notification is essential when you're searching for a hot item like an iPhone or an iPad. Once you find a listing, you can use the app to call or email the seller. The app also has several other smaller features that make it a pleasure to use. It has a favorites list, so you can save a listing. There's a mapping feature which lets you map and get driving directions to an item's location. The map is extremely useful for those who live in larger state. It also lets you add search filters for select categories and prices. You can also choose to see only those listings with photos, which is a must have when you're buying a high-priced item like a car. If you're a seller as well as buyer, CraigsPro+ also lets you login to your Craigslist account and manage your listings. The app supports multiple accounts and lets you choose which one to use when you login. Once you login, you can view and edit both live and expired listings. You can also create a new listing on your iPhone and use your camera or photo gallery to upload pictures. As you can tell, I genuinely like CraigsPro+. The app has several features that make it easy to find a bargain on Craigslist. It has an intuitive interface, which means you don't have to spend a lot of time setting things up. The only missing feature is a dedicated browse function. You can leave the search function blank and find all the listings in a category, but it's still a search-driven result. Some people may miss the free-form browsing, but you can always use mobile Safari to browse the Craigslist site. The CraigsPro+ app is available in the App Store for US$1.99. The developer Escargot Studios has several other Craigslist apps, but none seem to be as full-featured as the CraigsPro+ version.
Apple called: They want their prototype 3G MacBook Pro back
Astute TUAW readers may remember a story from two weeks ago about a prototype 2007 MacBook Pro with a 3G antenna built into the side of the LCD screen as well as a SIM slot. The device was being sold on eBay and had received bids in the neighborhood of US$70,000 before Apple requested that the sale be stopped. Now Apple wants the prototype back from its current owner. CNet contacted the seller, Carl Frega of North Carolina, who had purchased the unique machine from someone on Craigslist. The machine wasn't working, so Frega sold it again on Craigslist. This owner brought the machine to an Apple Store Genius Bar. When the machine was opened up, Apple refused to repair it as they noted that almost every part inside the device was "third party" -- the main logic board, optical drive, display, hard drive, and top case were all non-standard. The second buyer was miffed that Apple refused service and, thinking that the machine was a fake, took Frega to small claims court. Frega was forced to return the buyer's money and got the one-of-a-kind MacBook Pro back, after which he tried to sell the device on eBay to see if he could recoup his losses. Apple has now contacted Frega to recover the MacBook Pro, and the fate of the machine rests in the hands of the powers-that-be in Cupertino. It's too bad that this one can't be photographed for the Shrine of Apple.
HTC Holiday prototype shows up on Craigslist, gives us reason to celebrate (update: AT&T-bound)
This isn't something you see up for sale on Craigslist every day, but what you see here may very well be a true-blue HTC Holiday. According to the XDA thread, the person responsible for the pictures noticed the device was being sold on the famous classified site, purchased it, and splattered the images online as evidence. Certainly, the resemblance to the render we saw in May is uncanny (minus the unfortunately cracked screen), and if the specs stay true to what was rumored at the time, we can expect to enjoy a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU with 1GB of RAM on a 4.5-inch qHD (960 x 540) display -- all confirmed by the screenshots -- as well as Android 2.3.4 and dual cameras consisting of an 8MP rear and 1.3MP front. The smartphone was rumored to be heading to AT&T's lineup, though no branding could be found. Either way, this particular dream machine is destined to turn more than a few heads. Check out the gallery below for a few more angles. %Gallery-130585% [Thanks, Michael] Update: The "myATT" logo in the bottom right of the Holiday's app menu is a pretty obvious indicator that it is, indeed, on its way to AT&T -- so at least it's going through the testing rounds right now, and we'll see if it gets the final approval to get pushed to stores.
