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Gee, you think? At least they've offered some caution. "Use our site at your discretion. Not responsible for users getting screwed."

Really, Craigslist? Okay, so I’ll let you off the hook for now since I’m a strong believer in the ‘better late than  never’ mentality.

One thing I worry about with this giant disclaimer is that Craigslist has given up on the fraud crack-down and placed this notice up to relinquish themselves of any responsibility toward its users.

The intention at the insight of CsL was to offer an affordable, easy way for people to post focused classified advertising, reaching a target that are basically other people who want to skip the BS. What was once a vast sea of uncorrupted advertising, real products sold to real people, is now essentially a vast sea of fraud.

Craigslist (and other job board) scammers have taught us a few things along the way. For one, if you’re looking for “enthusiastic and motivated” employees to fill your open spots at XYZ company, for the love of God, don’t use those words. Leaving only the CsL-generated e-mail to get in contact with you looks about as legitimate as scribbles on the bathroom wall. Anyone who proves they can write by submitting an essay about a provided theme probably realizes halfway through that the work will be plagiarized and they’ll never get a call again. I can’t blame people for being doe-eyed. Even someone so naive as to submit several works for free to “prove” they can write are only guilty of humility.

But back to Craigslist. I have to hand it to ‘em. It was such a good idea at first. But just like with communism, men are not angels. For instance, look at the option of “flagging” a post. I can’t think of anything that burns worse than trying to shut down a job scammer only to see a re-worded ad posted a few days later. So has CsL given up already? We’re talking about people who steal identities, information and livelihoods, not to mention waste our precious time and the best punishment they can come up with is to force them to re-post their ads.

My proposed solution? Job posting websites should offer a confirmation service that requires the user to provide a working phone number that can be called, its owner identified and recorded as the original ad placer. Would this prevent fraud? No. But it would at least create a connection to a real person, which results in accountability that didn’t otherwise exist.