Sex Baiting Prank on Craigslist Affects Hundreds

["Fergie" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

Andy Baio:

[snip]

Recently, a blogger named Simon Owens ran a social experiment on
Craigslist. He wandered into the "Casual Encounters" section of the
personal ads where countless men and women were soliticing for
no-strings-attached sex and wondered, Is it really that easy? As a
test, he composed several ads with different permutations of assumed
identity and sexual orientation: straight/bi men/women looking for the
opposite/same sex. He then posted it to New York, Chicago, and Houston,
and tallied the results.

Overwhelmingly and instantly, the ads from the fake women looking for
male partners were inundated with responses, sometimes several per
minute. All the other ads received lukewarm responses, at best. These
results weren't surprising, but some of the observations were... Many
of these men used their real names and included personally identifiable
information, including work email addresses and home phone numbers.
Several admitted they were married and cheating on their spouses. Many
included photos, often nude.

His first conclusion was very reasonable: "If a really malicious person
wanted to get on craigslist and ruin a lot of people's lives, he easily
could."

[snip]

Read about the rest of the experiment here:

 http://www.waxy.org/archive/2006/09/08/sex_bait.shtml

Personally, I'm kind of speechless.... except for "Wow".

- ferg

--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


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