How To Hide Phone Number On Craigslist

How to Protect Myself as a Seller on Craigslist – Small …

Craigslist is a great resource for connecting you to prospective buyers, but it is not without its risks. Revealing too much information about yourself could make you a target for criminals, and the informal nature of the transactions creates the opportunity for the buyer to take the merchandise without actually paying for it. You can, however, minimize your risk by taking a few simple precautions when creating your ad and dealing with prospective buyers. Omit any personal information about yourself when you create your Craigslist ad. Do not include your phone number, a permanent email address or anything in photos of your product that someone could use to find your house or place of business. Select “anonymize” under your “Reply to” email address. This will create a random email address which will forward any mail it receives to the email address you provide. Ask prospective buyers to provide their phone number in emails to the anonymous address Craigslist creates for you. When you call the buyer, use caller ID blocking by appending *67 before dialing the number. Arrange meetings with prospective buyers in a public place. This will reduce the chance of the prospective buyer robbing you and keeps thieves pretending to be interested in buying your merchandise from scouting out your home or place of business for a future crime. Insist that the buyer pay for your merchandise in cash. Checks can bounce, buyers can forge cashier’s checks and other payment schemes can leave you with no payment for the merchandise you already handed over to the buyer. References Writer Bio Micah McDunnigan has been writing on politics and technology since 2007. He has written technology pieces and political op-eds for a variety of student organizations and blogs. McDunnigan earned a Bachelor of Arts in international relations from the University of California, Davis.

Craigslist hides Contact information within ad – Harmari

Recent changes to the Craigslist site have a major impact on how effective investigators can search for fraudulent and suspicious activity on the site.
Firstly, any phone numbers that are displayed in the content of the ad are hidden from view. The reader has to click “show contact info” for the phone number to appear. The good news is that these phone numbers can be reverse looked up through a Craigslist keyword search. The bad news is they will not be searchable via Google or any other aggregate search engine. Here’s a sample ad with the hidden phone number under the bubble.
Here’s the same ad with the bubble removed:
The second change involves the Reply/Contact button. If the button at the top of the ad says “Reply” there is only an email address displayed. But if the button says Contact, then there is a phone number, or email, or a first name displayed.
The phone number behind the Contact button is not searchable within Craigslist:Here are some statistics we recently compiled about the percentage of ads and if/where the ads contain the phone number, based on about 750, 000 ads:
Location
Number of Ads
Within Contact Button and Ad Body
162938
Within Contact Button and not in Ad Body
247160
Within Ad Body and not in Contact Button
98013
So what this means is when you keyword search for phone numbers on Craigslist, you are missing at least 37% of the ads. You might miss even more ads if you do not search all the common types of phone number formats being used, and doesn’t include spelled-out phone numbers.
Phone number search on Harmari covers all places the phone number is found in an ad
Harmari Search is the only comprehensive search tool that can capture all phone numbers everywhere. This includes all formats, including spelled-out format.
Learn more

How Do I Search Craigslist? – Private Investigator Blog – PI Buzz

Search Craigslist by phone number or any partial number, even if the number isn’t displayed within the posting. Select “show contact info” to see the hidden number.
Words — including partial names, addresses or numbers — that are in the body of a post or in the caption on a map can be searched.
There may be multiple listings by a person. Check all for additional information and search criteria.
Not all categories are searchable by number. Click the link under the search box to see a list of the categories that were searched. Scroll through listings in each category and find test search terms to see what isn’t being retrieved.
Historical classified ads, only, can be searched at Hamari. It caches some expired ads, with the phone number exposed, that are no longer on Craigslist, but the site doesn’t search partial phone numbers. There are other free tools for searching expired ads but none of them have all expired listings.
Find posts with combinations of words, location and partial numbers.
What tips do you have for searching Craigslist postings?

Frequently Asked Questions about how to hide phone number on craigslist

Can people see my phone number on Craigslist?

Firstly, any phone numbers that are displayed in the content of the ad are hidden from view. … The good news is that these phone numbers can be reverse looked up through a Craigslist keyword search. The bad news is they will not be searchable via Google or any other aggregate search engine.May 23, 2014

How do you find someone’s phone number on Craigslist?

How do you protect yourself when selling on Craigslist?

Here are some ways to protect yourself.Use cash. … Only deal with local people, in person. … Meet your buyer or seller in a secure location. … Sellers: Don’t let a buyer overpay and don’t agree to unusual payment scenarios. … Buyers: If it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably a scam. … Sellers: Watch out for eager beavers.More items…•Nov 13, 2019