Life with Churry.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

False Sense of Security

I posted some stuff for sale on Craig's List in preparation for the westward move. The site's popularity is definitely making things crazy. Instead of one for-sale post, I had to write 4 different posts for 4 different categories. There's gotta be a better way. I can understand how it used to just be someone's pet project. But now that Craig's List is a for-profit company (am I dating myself?), I feel a little better complaining about the site's shortcomings.

Anyway, it took me some time to decide which of my 11 e-mail addresses to use for managing the responses. Whether the spam and privacy concerns are warranted or not, I don't really want to use my main e-mail address when communicating with random Craig's List users.

The first response I got came from a Georgetown address, which felt safe enough. I responded with my Georgetown address, and sold my TV in less than 12 hours. Now I have to find somewhere else to watch American Idol.

The next two responses were from Gmail addresses, followed by a Hotmail address. Guess what I realized? Response content aside, the Gmail users seemed much more credible than the Hotmail user simply because of their e-mail provider. Isn't that interesting? Discrimination based on internet savvy-ness.

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