blog.backpage.com

We all know that CAPTCHA, the challenge-response security feature found on most websites nowadays, is a pain. However, most people also understand that it’s a necessary evil. We here at Backpage use it to thwart evil-doers who use spam to peddle their schemes and bots who would seek to exploit our services and harass our users.

After CAPTCHA offended one Backpage user so badly, he claims the very foundation of his company came undone. In fact, in a letter from the users’ attorney, it offended a girl, who was spamming our site performing “data entry work” on behalf of the user, so badly that the traumatic event left his employee shattered and in ruin.

What randomly generated word was the user asked to enter that could generate such chaos, you ask? The most terrible and offensive kind of all; a “slang expression for female genitalia”. At least, that’s what their attorney claims in a poorly written letter he sent us a while back.

"This seems reasonable", we thought to ourselves.

As we all know, when fabricating a lawsuit, it is considered bad etiquette to demand anything under a quarter million dollars. Knowing this, the user, being the fine and upstanding businessman he is, has demanded we pay him $320,000 in “damages”.

For those of you keeping score at home that’s THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS.

I could go on and on about how the word “pussy” isn’t a word that’s entirely uncommon to hear on network television nowadays or that it wouldn’t be a shock to see it in an elementary school library, but what I really want to know is…does anyone else see the irony here? Come on. Is it just me or is this guy being a pussy?

- Carl

We’ve been pretty busy adding to our infrastructure. We’ve had some
growing pains and some of our sponsor inventory is sold out
temporarily. We’ve put in place a solution for this and the problem
should be solved.

Here’s a quick list of some development we plan to release soon.

Affiliate sign up:
We’ll be releasing a self sign up form soon where you can add a link
on your site. You get paid commission on upgrades purchased by users
you refer. You can sign up early by sending me an email.

Auto Repost:
Users want more options on the re-posting interval. We
have a solution planned where users will be able to choose from
several re-posting intervals like 3, 7 or 30 days.

New markets:
Here’s a list of the most requested markets in the past 30 days. We
plan to do these and few more cities soon:

Gainesville, FL
Ocala
St. Augustine
Charlottesville
Danville
Fredericksburg
Harrisonburg
Lynchburg
Fayetteville, NC
Abilene
Amarillo
Laredo
Lubbock
Odessa / Midland
Winston-Salem
Appleton-Oshkosh-FDL
Green Bay
Kenosha-Racine
Milwaukee
Wausau
Sheboygan
Eau Claire
Janesville
La Crosse
Bellingham
Everett
Olympia
Chattanooga
Wyoming
Halifax
Winnipeg
Montana

If you have new markets to suggest, contact us.

Craigslist will start charging for erotic services soon. Backpage.com has been doing this for years.  It is perhaps the best way to reduce the prank postings, illegal postings, and postings by under aged users.

Not many solutions for user content generated sites are perfect when it comes to content quality. Craig will face some of the same challenges we face. While there is fraud with employer postings, it is significantly higher in adult. I outlined a few challenges below.

Stolen credit card use

Users “borrow” credit cards from friends, family, or customers.

Stolen credit card use is just a lot higher in adult categories. We usually hear from the owner of the credit card one month later by a phone call or charge back. Meanwhile, the ad was up the whole time and the user was able to get away with the fraud.

Once fraud is reported to us, we can trace it back to a user and take steps to prevent future abuse.  Unfortunately though, many internet con artists are seasoned, and can work their way around blocks.  It really is a “whack-a-mole” type problem.

A far bigger problem is syndicates with unlimited stolen credit cards. They are criminals. They account for nearly $400,000 in attempted transactions on our site alone this year. They get stolen credit cards from viruses on a user’s computer or from bogus web sites. They then use a credit card to post fake ads in paid categories with links to sites with more viruses. Or, they post fake ads to get email addresses to spam users with Viagra over seas sites, porn, or adult dating.

Some internet marketing companies sell phone verified accounts on craigslist. I’m sure they plan to use stolen credit cards for the additional verification.  The criminals have an unlimited amount of user’s credit card numbers and personal data. They will post using a US internet service provider. It will be almost impossible for any automated fraud detection.

So, I congratulate Craig on implementing a model similar to ours. As an upside for our economy, he will need to hire people to manage the massive increase in credit card fraud. There will be a lot of it. Backpage recently added two more people to our fraud control staff. It’s the hot new job for our growing e-commerce economy where stolen credit cards abound.

- Carl

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