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  Geebo 8:00 am on June 30, 2021 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: debt ( 3 ), debt collectors ( 11 ), harassment   

  What do debt collectors and scammers have in common? 

  

  By Greg Collier

  These days, debt collectors seem to be an unavoidable fact of life. Some people just aren’t financially able to pay some bills like medical expenses. Some others even go out of their way to avoid paying any debt in their name. Even people with perfect credit sometimes miss a relatively small payment or an unclaimed debt seems to slip through the cracks. Anyway you look at it, most of us will end up dealing with a debt collector at some time or another. While legitimate debt collectors aren’t scammers, they do employ some of the same tactics that scammers use.

  Just like scammers, debt collectors will try to pressure you into a making a payment right then and there. First, you have a right to know when and where the debt came from. The collection agency might not have this information, since they may have bought the debt from someone else. At this point, you should ask for a debt verification letter that will detail where the debt supposedly came from. You’ll also want to check with your state to see when the statute of limitations on debt is. If the collection agency is asking you to pay a debt that’s older than the statute of limitations, if you start paying on that debt it starts the statute of limitations over again.

  If a debt collector threatens to have you arrested or garnish your wages, they are breaking the law. Unfortunately, this does not stop some debt collectors from using this tactic. This is a trick used to go after people with debt that the collection agency doesn’t plan on actually taking legal action against.

  If you receive repeated calls from a debt collector, you should look into your state’s laws concerning debt collection harassment as well. Just because someone may owe a debt doesn’t mean they should be treated as a second class citizen.

   

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  Geebo 9:00 am on December 12, 2019 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: debt collectors ( 11 ), harassment, lawsuit ( 47 ), Scams ( 1,366 )   

  Debt can have an expiration date 

  

  Debt collection is an unusual business. In some states, you have to have a perfect credit record in order to work in debt collection. You’d think they’d hire people with bad credit since they’re the ones who know how to avoid collectors. It’s also not unusual for certain debts to be passed on from the initial vendor to a debt collection agency and then to other debt collectors down the road. So it may not come as much of a surprise that some of these debts end up in the hands of collectors who may not follow the law when it comes to trying to get money out of people who probably don’t have it.

  Debt collectors can sue you for any amount that’s been sent to collections. However, they only usually bother with lawsuits if they’re owed a substantial amount of money. On top of that, they have a limited window in which to file suit depending on the state. Due to the vast amount of debt some of these collectors have purchased, they don’t always meet the deadline to file a lawsuit. According to the Better Business Bureau, this hasn’t stopped some debt collection agencies from trying to collect on debts by threatening lawsuits even though the statute of limitations has been reached.

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2VFeQgZ0-w%5D

  Each state has its own statute of limitations. So before you agree to any kind of payment, not only should you check to make sure the debt is legitimate or not, but you should also make sure if the statut of limitations has been reached. In many states, if a collector is threatening to sue you after the statute of limitations that can be considered as harassment. Sadly, that’s not the only underhanded tactic that some debt collectors use. Maybe in the future, we’ll have more posts about how to protect yourself from underhanded debt collectors.

   
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  Geebo 9:01 am on October 15, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: craigslist ( 129 ), George Stanley, harassment, Maine ( 2 ), theft ( 6 )   

  Man’s home ransacked after malicious craigslist ad posted 

  

  There’s a crime that’s been occurring through craigslist for years now that while not as violent as some can be just as devastating. Apparently, if you get on the bad side of one of your neighbors they have the option of placing a craigslist ad telling the internet that everything in your house and on your property is being given away for free. Even though in reality, no one ever gives away all their possessions for free on craigslist, it doesn’t stop craigslist users from showing up in droves to plunder the property like so many Visigoths at the gates of Rome. Sadly, this occurred to one man in Maine.

  George Stanley left his home and business in Greene, Maine, to spend a couple of weeks in Florida. When he returned, he found that his property had been pillaged and much of what wasn’t taken was destroyed. According to Stanley, he had a car on his property that he was planning on restoring. The marauding horde of vandals not only cut the tires off the car, but they also pried open the trunk, hood, and doors to take whatever they could. Mr. Stanley reportedly has cancer and believes he only has a few years left, but now, many of the possessions he had that he used to make a living are now gone and nothing has been returned.

  This unfortunate incident could have been easily prevented if craigslist just took the extra step to moderate their ads. Instead, craigslist let’s just about every ad get posted to their platform unless it hurts their own bottom line. While most rational people wouldn’t believe someone would give away all their stuff in such a disorganized matter, there are a number of people who believe anything they read on the internet and lot of them use craigslist. We at Geebo care about not only our users more than that but also the general public as we moderate our ads and we would never willingly allow our platform to be used to create such havoc.

   
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  Geebo 9:11 am on June 11, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: craigslist ( 129 ), harassment, real estate ( 127 ), rental scam ( 87 ), Rentals ( 14 ), threats ( 2 )   

  Craigslist scammer pulls gun on victim 

  

  We’ve written about home rental scams on craigslist many times before. For those of you who may not be familiar with them, a scammer will typically post an ad on craigslist renting a property they don’t actually own. They do this in order to collect fees up front for either rent or some kind of deposit. In the past people have even moved into properties they thought they had rented only to find out they’ve been had. While many of these scammers are located overseas, there are plenty of domestic scammers as well.

  In Pueblo, Colorado, one particular scammer has been arrested after allegedly physically threatening his victims and even brandishing a gun at one point. Police say that this particular con man tried renting the same property to five different families in Pueblo. Some of these families even had some of their possessions moved in only to find themselves locked out of the property and their belongings were gone. When one of the victims confronted the accused scammer, the scammer was said to have pulled a gun on the victim. Another victim claims that the scammer threatened to burn the property down while the victims were trying to live in it. The scammer was able to collect at least $4,000 from his victims.

  While scammers don’t usually tend to be this violent there is always that possibility. Due to the proliferation of these types of scams on craigslist and craigslist’s unwillingness to moderate their ads, almost every rental ad on craigslist should be seen as suspect. The housing crisis in this country is bad enough for many families without having to deal with criminals like this. The best way to avoid scams like this is to check with your county appraiser’s website or office to see if the property is actually available for rent.

   
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  Geebo 10:07 am on February 6, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: craig newmark ( 7 ), craigslist ( 129 ), Factmata, harassment, hate speech ( 14 ), sexual harassment ( 3 )   

  Does craigslist’s founder really want to stop hate speech? 

  

  (Disclaimer: This post will be discussing frank topics that may be disturbing to some readers)

  It was announced recently that a number of tech luminaries would be investing in a start-up called Factmata. Factmata’s purpose is to use artificial intelligence (A.I.) in order to “help social media companies, publishers and advertising networks weed out fake news, propaganda, clickbait, online bullying and hate speech.” Factmata’s founders were so confident in their product that they e-mailed billionaire investor Mark Cuban out of the blue and he liked it so much he was an initial investor in the start-up.

  One of the supposed tech heavyweights investing in the latest round of Factmata’s funding is craigslist founder Craig Newmark. We find this more than ironic as Newmark’s record on stopping hate speech and online harassment is laughable at best. If it’s hate speech you’re looking for, you can look no further than the rants & raves section from craigslist’s own beloved San Francisco Bay Area. On the off-chance that racist diatribe is flagged we’ve provided a screen shot below.

  

  Click to enlarge

  As far as online harassment goes, craigslist has long been wielded as a weapon by petty individuals looking to get revenge on unsuspecting victims including ads soliciting the rape of former romantic partners. Sadly, that’s not the only case of rape by proxy attempted on craigslist.

  That’s not even taking into account the number of child predators that roam throughout craigslist with ads so blatant you might wonder how they were allowed on craigslist to begin with. Here’s just a sample.

  Virgin? Would you like to lose it (M4W)” and “Hello HS and Virgin Girls.”

  “mothers who were looking for a guy to teach their daughter about the joys of sex.”

  “a little girl to play with for the night”

  Craigslist still relies on their so-called ‘community policing’ to flag such ads, but when your ads are being posted and read by sexual predators, then no one is going to flag any ad. This is the textbook definition of letting the inmates run the asylum. So you’ll have to excuse us if we’re just a little more than skeptical about Craig Newmark’s commitment to fighting hate speech and harassment.

  Factmata could in fact end up being a great tool to curb the rising tide of hate speech and online harassment, but when one of your major investors cares little about fighting those problems on his own website it severely hurts Factmata’s credibility.

  Mueller Report states craigslist used by Russians during election | Greg's Corner is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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  Geebo 8:58 am on April 6, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: egg, harassment, Mastodon, Twitter ( 13 )   

  By dropping the egg, Twitter claims to combat harassment 

  

  Twitter recently announced that they were dropping the default egg avatar for new users, and replacing it with a generic silhouette. They say that the new avatar is a more pleasing aesthetic, but they also claim that it will curb harassment and bullying by trolls and anonymous users.

  In recent months, the Twitter egg has come to symbolize the hordes of anonymous users who sign up for multiple accounts used solely for the purpose of harassing others. One such infamous incident is when Saturday Night Live cast member Leslie Jones was harassed by racist and misogynist Twitter users who were using scores of anonymous accounts with the egg avatar. To put it bluntly, if Twitter thinks that by changing the default avatar from one generic one to another is going to curb harassment, it’s obvious that they are greatly mistaken. The trolls and their ilk will continue to just use the default avatar whether it’s an egg or a shadow because they’ll put minimal effort into opening new accounts used only for harassment.

  Since Twitter has largely failed to do anything about its harassment problem a different social network has seen a spike in users, possibly due to their policies that distance themselves from Twitter in this aspect. Mastodon has implemented a policy that specifically bans those who espouse the views of Nazis. Since the open-source service is based in Germany, German law specifically bans Nazi iconography and Holocaust denial. Mastodon has also implemented other features that are designed to discourage harassment by offering better privacy controls among other options.

  Is Mastodon or any other Twitter clone on the precipice of taking over the social network market? Not really. However, if Twitter continues to descend into a quagmire of persecution without any intervention on Twitter’s behalf, then its userbase could splinter off into other avenues, leaving it a more recent equivalent of MySpace.

   
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  Geebo 10:58 am on February 3, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: craig newmark ( 7 ), craigslist ( 129 ), harassment, wikipedia ( 2 )   

  Craigslist founder spends half a million to combat harassment, just not at craigslist 

  

  Craigslist founder and namesake, Craig Newmark, has recently donated $500,000 of his own money in order to combat the “trolling, harassment and cyber-bullying” of users of a certain website. Of course that website is craigslist right? Um not exactly.

  Newmark recently spent the half million to fight the trolling on the oft-vandlaized Wikipedia.

  Wikimedia says the money will be used to launch a program to help editors “more quickly identify potentially harassing behavior.”

  While Wikipedia is a highly resourceful and valuable website, it can’t possibly contain the amount of trolling, harassment and cyber-bullying that craigslist does. In the past, ads on craigslist have been flagged and pulled because the business posting the ad said that they spoke Spanish. Go to any of the rants and raves sections and it won’t take you long to find some racist hate-filled diatribe. Convicted mass murderer Dylann Roof even placed a craigslist ad looking for a travel buddy that said “No Jews, queers, or (racial slurs)” prior to his killing spree. That’s not even counting the number of revenge or prank ads on craigslist that end up sending potentially dangerous people to the houses of unsuspecting victims.

  When you’re own home is in a state of extreme disrepair, you normally don’t spend money to help fix the nicer house down the street.

   
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  Geebo 11:01 am on January 5, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: harassment, pseudonym, Safety ( 45 )   

  Using real names vs. pseudonyms online 

  

  During the early days of the internet it was almost universally recommended to use a screen name rather than your real name in order to protect your privacy. That practice was almost universally abandoned when service like Facebook came along. Not only did using your real name make in easier to find your friends but Facebook’s own policy has almost killed off the online pseudonym. While this practice is more convenient is it better?

  Facebook argues that when people use their real names online there is less chance of online harassment. One could argue that if you go to any comment section that uses Facebook comments, you’ll not only see online harassment but you’ll see people being harassed because they used real their name. Whether it’s sexist, ethnic or some other prejudice, some people will use just that information to not only harass someone but in some cases take their harassment into the real world. This isn’t even mention those who have been victims of domestic abuse who are trying to remain hidden from their attackers.

  Real names do not equal automatic respect and kindness online. As a matter of fact research shows that it’s just the opposite. Too many people are proud to be jerks online and have no fear of using their real names to belittle others.