I tried to buy iphone on Craigslist and the "seller" replied to me saying: "Someone just purchased this from me, however i can also show you where I got it from. We picked up 3 brand new ones on zbiddybet.com, and have been selling them here as well as on ebay to get extra cash. Lately, not very many people have been bidding so it's not that hard to win. The secret is usually to bid only if the counter is at 2 seconds and you win just about every time. If we can do this anyone can."
The website itself is astutely designed to mislead first time users. I believe it does recognize IP addresses and shows certain features to people who are using for first time only. When I opened the site, it had the sembalance of a legitimate website, with news reporting about the site on web page. And it shows a MacBook being sold for very cheap with time counting down in seconds. With an urge to get the bid, I tried to register quickly. And when it asked me for my credit card information, I assumed that was required for registration, and in my hurry to bid for the notebook, I did not think much if this site could actually be scamming me.in the next page they sent me a thank you email charging my account for $99!
I went to the home page again to look at all those "hot" items being sold at cheap price, and of course there is none of it, no macbook, no news reporting about how good the site was! I don't know how one can prove it, but the items they show before you register are definitely not real auctions, they are just traps to lead you to sign on, where there is a second trap that automatically charges your credit card for an amount you did not even know of.
I was mislead because, I thought a real person in Craigslist wrote to me; and since I was trying to buy item on ebay, I did not feel the reply from the "seller" was a solicitation, and my guard was down. Otherwise, I would not even have taken time to read the email, I would have simply spammed it. Essentially, they used a sophisticate technique to get around my mental guard against the spam. Of course, in hind site, looking at the email the ebay "seller" sent me, I should have seen the "too good to be true" language. After all the old saying, "if it is too good to be true, then it is not true" does work even now. That is one foolproof defense against spammers.
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