If you receive email from robots@craigslist.org, with information that someone forwarded to you, don’t click on it! This is a new Craigslist scam, where the spammers are using the Craigslist ’email to a friend’ feature to spam you. Here’s how it works.
Actual Craigslist listings from one of the below spam. Don’t try this at home!
The scammers post their own Craigslist listing, and then they use the Craigslist ’email to a friend’ option to spam you about the listing.
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Clicking on ’email to a friend’ brings up this very simple page:
Now, almost certainly these spammers have scripted this, so that their script grabs email addresses and auto-populates the ‘your address’ and the ‘destination address’ fields automatically. But even if they haven’t done that, there are people offshore who are willing to do this sort of work manually for pennies per address.
Anyways, the bottom line is that if you get email from robot@craigslist.org that looks like one of the ones below, delete it without clicking on it.
If you get an email from robot@craigslist.org and it seems like it was actually sent by a friend, forwarding a listing in which you might be interested (say, for example, you are househunting, and your friend sees a real estate listing on Craigslist in which they think you might be interested), instead of clicking on the link, first confirm with your friend that they actually sent it.
Actual Craigslist ’email to a friend’ Spam
From: robot@craigslist.org
Subject: we would save with solar https://www.theinternetpatrol.com/brick-wall/
Date: March 29, 2016 at 4:56:55 AM MDT
linda@lindahurd.com forwarded you this from craigslist:
we would save with solar https://www.theinternetpatrol.com/brick-wall/
ramallah.craigslist[dot]org/res/5508562266.html
If you don’t want to receive email-a-friend messages, please go to:
And here is another one:
From: robot@craigslist.org
Subject: solar is all the help you need https://www.theinternetpatrol.com/brick-wall/
Date: March 29, 2016 at 10:50:00 AM MDT
cberg@rwbaird.com forwarded you this from craigslist:
solar is all the help you need https://www.theinternetpatrol.com/brick-wall/
“http://bangkok.craigslist.co.th/res/5508551654.html”
If you don’t want to receive email-a-friend messages, please go to:
“https://accounts.craigslist.org/eafprefs/U2FsdGVkX181Nzk1NTc5NSmGD2McKBlr7D6cSqcix_xKVu35AHc9SoWIW6GROQUEj1Mhwd_YHaDog6whkWxOmA”
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I see that the replies here are from a couple of years ago. FYI this is still happening, got an email today from robot@craigslist saying I ‘created a posting’ with subject line being an item I am selling but, I created that posting a month ago. If you get one of these emails, delete it immediately. You can check all of your ads from your CL account page if you think there’s a legitimate concern. Be careful.
It just happened to me,Unfortunately they seemed like a legitimate landlord asking all normal and worrisome questions about me,and I texted them my ID.The only catch is is a property that I know so after the robot Craigslist email ,I stopped.I’m contacting or going to the property in person and warning them because these people are professional scammer’s they can seriously fool you to a point .At least in my case I’m an expirennce renter and a local,and most people here like to do things in person asap rather then emails and calls,so I was able to catch on the scam quick before clicking on Anthing.On a busy day I might have fallen for it,awful…
I went through a very strange process last night. Scam? Spoof? None of the above? I am a buyer/renter who contacted someone renting a house through CL. Said first step was this, they generated a secret code link to email, through robot@craigslist.org with request to sign&publish. This wound up creating a new CL account for that email & my phone, which appeared to contain a posting for a house – not the one I was interested in. Seller then asked me to paste a link into text. Not sure what ‘link’ he wanted, I didn’t send anything. I deleted the CL account that had been created, then he emailed me a rental application form. (which I also didn’t fill out. I may be befuddled but I’m not a complete moron). The whole thing seems strange, but I don’t understand how this could be used maliciously.
Were they just wasting my time or is this something I should be concerned about?? They know my name, phone number, and an email address I never use.
No scams.