How to Use Craigslist Safely When Buying and Selling

Craigslist is one of the oldest and largest online classifieds websites, operating in hundreds of cities across the US. People post listings for everything: furniture, jobs, apartments, cars, appliances, and services. Local Craigslist transactions are typically done in person, making them similar in many ways to Facebook Marketplace deals.

Craigslist has no user accounts, no buyer protection, no payment system, and no rating system for buyers or sellers. This simplicity is part of what makes it popular — anyone can post and anyone can respond without signing up — but it also means you are entirely on your own when it comes to assessing whether a deal is safe and legitimate.

Scams on Craigslist tend to follow predictable patterns. Overpayment scams: someone offers to pay you more than your asking price with a check, then asks you to wire back the difference — the check bounces and you lose the money. Rental scams: someone posts a beautiful apartment at a below-market price, claims to be out of the country, and asks you to wire a deposit. Bait-and-switch: an item is listed for a very low price but when you arrive, the seller claims it was sold and offers a different (more expensive) item.

The best protection is simple: only deal locally, meet in person, never wire money, and do not send any form of digital payment before you have the physical item in your possession.

Craigslist itself advises users to never wire funds to strangers, never give financial information to someone you have not met, and always deal with people locally. Their safety page (craigslist.org/about/safety) has a concise list of warning signs.