Ghost Protocol

For those who aren’t familiar with the term, “Ghosting” is when you post an ad on Craigslist, it shows as successfully posted in your account and you get a confirmation email just like normal, but it never displays on Craigslist. The system tells you that your post has been published but your post never appears on the front page of Craigslist, it is not appearing at all. The system gives you a fake post ID and a URL and you can see your post if you put the post’s URL in your browser, but unfortunately no one else will be able to see it because it will never appear in their listings anywhere.

Your post is like a ghost lost forever more in the servers of Craigslist. The actual term for this among moderators is called Hellbanning. Craigslist has perfected the art of the hellban and due to their special brand of “community moderation” (aka flagging) made other users accuse each other and blame the wrong party for their Craigslist misfortunes. It’s all smoke and mirrors, and if you understand what’s going on, it’s actually a very simple issue to solve.

In general, the the basis behind ads getting “ghosted” include some of (but not limited to) these reasons:

• Duplicate Titles on your ads
• Posting the same ad more often than every 48 hours
• Not deleting your old identical ad before posting a new ad
• Posting the same ad in more than one city/area or category
• Including characters other than letters and numbers in your Title / Location fields.
• Including HTML /pictures / links
• Duplicate ads
• Direct Craigslist intervention in your account
• Posting mass volume of ads
• Using free “junk” proxies
• Having a banned user agent aka vanity user agent
• Cross posting with you account in multiple sections (commercial activity)

Softblocking / Hellban

Ghosting is one of our clients biggest problems, but don’t worry, it’s also the easiest to fix. You are SOFTBLOCKED (Hellbanned). Many of you are so frustrated by this point, that you’re working against yourself. Desperately adding new information to the old information, trying to force your way back online. They are using psychological tactics to bring you to this point to deter you from using their site, and blame everyone else along the way. That’s how the softblock is designed by Craigslist – intentionally.

So, Step one: Stop. Relax. Forget what you knew, or what used to work! They have changed things considerably over the last 3 years. You need to begin fresh and learn a few of the principals of their database before you can continue. Lets begin with the ip address. Your IP is made of 4 groups of 3 numbers.( 123.456.789.000 ) They are called octets. The value of the octets actually only go up to 255. If you want to be seen as a different user on CL, you can not come from the same subnet. The 789 group of numbers is the subnet. If you use a service like hide my ass, and they keep changing IP’s in the last octet only, the 000 group. But you’re on the same subnet, and you will be ignored after 4 flags. You need to change the last two sets of numbers now, that’s why the rebooting your cable modem trick no longer works. Too many people caught on, and they had to be more specific.

If you’re using any service for IP’s its most likely you are experiencing a softblock. A softblock is what we call a secretly and permanently limited or weakened account status aka hellban. It can also apply to an email, phone number, ip address. If you continue to use any of the softblocked variables just mentioned (title, phone number, certain phrases unique to our business) in your post, and your brand new account will also be softblocked. It is permanent, and cannot be changed. The only thing you can do now, is delete your old account details, and create everything brand new. Never visit our dead accounts again. It will taint your new ip, and migrate the softblock to your new accounts instantly. A softblocked account or IP will not count your flags, and it will only allow you to generate weak ads that come down with just a few flags. Softblocked accounts are linked to the blocked IP’s. If you go to a fresh unblocked IP with bad cookies from your softblocked account in your browser, and or log into a blown account, your fresh ip will now be softblocked as well instantly! Have you ever notice Craigslist hesitates when it’s just about to ask you to re verify your account, or when an ad is about to come down? Or when you log into an old account on a new ip? That’s because it is writing a new rule about your account (sql) on their server. If you use an old account on a new ip, or old cookies are left in your browser when you log on to a new account, their server marks your ip, the careless actions cause all the bad settings to instantly migrate over to your new account, & your softblocked!!

Here is our tool that has capabilities similar to Craigslist’s ability to check who you are by a simple browser visit. You can also use it to check your proxy server to see if your easy to detect. If you fail any of these proxy tests, you should not use it in Craigslist for anything. You might even find a few free open proxies in your area you can try at your own risk.

If you are getting flagged and removed, but not getting the emails any longer, Craigslist has either done it themselves, (unlikely), or softblocked your account. You will have nothing but intermittent problems from then on with your ip, and your ads. Your ability to flag will also be lost. This is a sophisticated system. It learns all by itself. You must now have a different ip address for each account. Keep track of them, if you cross the wires and you will blow your account, and the phone number they ask you to re verify from. If you are ultra careful, you might want to use an entirely different subnet for each account, if one is available. When setting up a posting vps, we ask for non sequential IP’s from different subnets.

Cookies

To access Craigslist you need to have your browser cookies enabled. Craigslist has what is called persistent cookies, and they expire after one month. This tells us that they are measuring your monthly statistics, and penalizing you based on those averages, as well as the other methods they use to chart and softblock you. Your cookies always need to be cleared before you login to a different account. Or all the bad aspects of each account will migrate (cross-pollinate each other) and you wind up chasing your tail. Softblocking is specifically engineered to keep you guessing, give you intermittent posting/ghosting results, and frustrate you. These settings have really made some people believe Craigslist knows more than they really do. We have developed an App that can help yu keep track of all of your accounts, right inside of the Craigslist login page. Every time you visit this age, all of your old identifying Craigslist cookies are deleted, then replaced. So you have all of your Craigslist accounts to choose from at your fingertips, and fresh cookies each time. One cookie slip.. could mean a softblock on your new PVA. Our CraigsAccounts App built into CraigsFlagger Pro and CraigsPoster Pro solves that problem for good.

Blocked all your Accounts

People have on occasion found themselves blocked from Craigslist, and unable to make a new account that will generate ads successfully. Many times, this is because you made a mistake, you used a different account on the wrong ip, you logged in with old cookies in your browser, etc. In extreme cases.. they will use your phone numbers, websites, and ip addresses etc. to “cross-link” all your accounts, and paint them with the same brush. Then, the moment you should use your company name, your phone numbers, your domain name in your ad, or some specific phrase or title you have used in the past repeatedly, or the banned ip address, your a ghost! When you have been marked for deletion, someone will sit down and read through all your posts from all your accounts and “profile” you by adding anything and everything that they can to the spam-bots search and destroy routine. This may be your old tracker code.. a certain unique way you do your html, your list of keywords.. something you least expect.

If you have really stared their attention towards you.. do not switch accounts, IP’s, phone numbers all in one day and go right back to what you were doing. An “agent” is waiting for you, and expecting this. Kick back for a couple of days until they get preoccupied with some other task, make some picture ads, read over our tutorials again and reflect. Obviously, you just set off enough alarms to get their full attention. When you get back in the section, you need to go slowly, and have more accounts to distribute your work. In fact, you might want to distribute your efforts over a variety of sections as well. It is likely you have both your competitor’s attention and Craigslist at the same time. Re-think your strategy.

New Account

When your posts are coming down, just trash that account, don’t play their game, today it works, tomorrow you’re gone.. it is designed to get rid of you and drive you mad. You will need to get a new ip, clear your cookies, get a new email, new CL account, and use new titles. If you think your phone number is banned, you need to make a picture in Photoshop of your contact details, and post it without a link. Here is an extreme example of a picture ad. It reveals nothing except the domain that it resides on. We describe how this is done in the graphics section. Your own photo does not need to be so elaborate, you can make a simple one in paint in about 5 minutes, or use the text to image service, turn your text or webpages into a photo in seconds.

User Agent

Not only are they monitoring your ip, your cookies, your operating system, they are monitoring your user agent. They throw flags against your account if you open an account from internet explorer, then log on from Firefox. Or, from a Mac, then to XP. They reason, if you’re changing systems, you are engaged in commercial activities such as logging in from all three browsers at the same time from different browsers for example. Updating your browser is fine.. but not downgrading. If you need to log into your accounts at the same time, we suggest you install these two plugins, Multi Fox, and the button for it, Multi Fox Button

Proxy Resellers

If you are following all the rules we are setting out for you, and still getting ghosted, it’s quite possible that proxy resellers are probably selling junk IP’s to you, and every single other aggressive Craigslist user in your area. They buy the entire ip group called a “c block”, and sell you individual IP’s from the same subnet. They are ALL SOFTBLOCKED!! The first one of you using the same subnet, 255 users, to get Craigslist’s attention by over posting, or what ever, can get the whole c block softblocked for a month or more. The resellers know this, but don’t say anything. Why would they, they just sold some sucker a garbage vps system with garbage IP’s from a garbage subnet to 255 people posting on the same website with them, Craigslist! You need unique subnets to play this game, not unique IP’s. don’t let them play games with you. They know this, but they want to sell you garbage and feed off of your frustration as well. Chances are you’ll keep throwing money at it and get nowhere with them unless you know the difference. Our vps hosting provider is small, in a big city. We chat about CL openly. I told him what I needed it for. He admitted to what I just described, reselling the rest of the subnet possibly to our competitors. Peer one, his ip provider sells them IP’s by the c block in the same subnet. He wanted to give me 70 sequential ip’s from this same subnet, I said no way! I don’t even want 2 IP’s from the same subnet because CL sees them both as the same machine, and will softblock all my accounts and would not work for flagging, or posting reliably.

**Note: Craigslist does not now, or in the foreseeable future support the new ipv6 protocol so don’t buy those kinds of ip addresses from resellers for your vps.

Clad Genius

For those of you using a posting program, have you considered where the proxie’s were coming from? How does a service like clad get them? For free, and they scrape them. So, if you don’t mind bleeding money, and hammering your ads back up as fast as they come down, do continue with that. Each ad is not created equal. Ads generated by an account with no limitations can take over a hundred flags to bring down. Ads generated by flawed accounts that the spam bot has tagged as spammers, have a very low flagging threshold. They can come down with as little as 1 flag, usually 4 flags. And since your ads are down, you need to get clad to post more and more, faster and faster. If you complain to them, or read up on the issue of weak ads in their literature, you will find, they recommend you keep changing your pva’s to create stronger ads. The whole concept is a vicious cycle, and it has put so much money in their pockets. Do not fall for this type of auto poster software, Craigslist will win, and you will just dump your money into PVA’s and maintenance fees and end up with ghosted ads, and possibly a cease and desist from Craigslist.

Blaming someone else

We are all here, focused on the same topics. But we are not where you are. We deal in reality, and change things at that level. You can change the angle of your mirrors if all you deal in is smoke and mirrors. But you will not like how that turns out. What we describe is the truth, or we wouldn’t keep going on about it. We are not advertising on here, we are not trying to sell you get rich quick mlm schemes in here. Just the facts, and lots of them. Why? What’s our angle? We are here to help. Just like we said on the site before you bought this, we are in the members area bringing more and more to the table so you can finally break free of the unsuccessful cycle you’re in. The reason we don’t have a phone number, and we don’t get personally involved with our clients is the same reason you don’t get in the water with a drowning person ever.

You toss a float, or extend a stick. Many of you are hurt, damaged, panicked, irritated, attacked, and behind the 8 ball. Some of you even try to take it out on us. The reason people do this sometimes is because they need to blame someone. Everything was OK, and now its not. So, blinded by the aforementioned reasons, some people just attack who ever is nearest, not the cause of the problem. Who is the cause of the problem? The people flagging your ads? Nope, they are the patsy. Craigslist? Nope, they are the cause of the confusion, but not the actual problem. Are we the problem, because you now need to learn a few things to be able to continue to compete? No, we are providing the information you need to overcome this. We tell you right up front that the red pill is not what you might want to hear, but it will be the truth. So.. what is the problem? YOU ARE! You made an agreement with Craigslist, and you broke it. So, they lead you in circles while you frantically go around your circles blaming everyone else for your own mistakes and dishonored agreements. Solution? If you’re going to be bad, learn to be good at it.

Some of you really remind us of the movie the Sixth Sense. You’re dead in the water, and you don’t even realize it. You are stumbling around looking for the light, and no one will help you. You keep doing the same things again and again, and don’t realize something major has changed, and you need to adapt. More and more furious, more and more blind. So, how can we help you to stop this vicious circle? Let me stress to you, forget what you think you know.. they are using it against you to continue to confuse you. Only use techniques you find in our members section. We tell you exactly what they are doing, and how and why if you care to read it. Once you feel you have a grip on this again and have rejoined the living again, then feel free to improvise or take shortcuts.

Now that we have established who is responsible for your misfortune, how is it we can fix the problem here, and give you an advantage? A few of you are just not hearing or understanding us.. you still have flagging and ghosting problems after months with us. You don’t seem to see past your entitlement issues, you believe you are entitled to post 75 ads a day from the same ip because you could a month ago and it worked. They changed, and you didn’t. Now you just go in circles getting nowhere. You can change this in ONE DAY! Change everything, and read our posting guides again. Everything you need to know is all in here. If you can change your attitude, you can change your altitude. What did Einstein say about problem solving? “Problems cannot be solved at the same level in which they were created.” Now you know who did this to you, why, and the direction to take to fix everything. You’re well on your way. Rise above this and resolve your issue. We strongly suggest you take a break from technical details for a moment, and read the Philosophy Section next.