Spammers strangling Craigslist?

From Techdirt:

“Random text is added to each spam message to fool Craigslist’s duplicate message detector. IP proxy sites are used to post from a wide range of IP addresses. E-mail addresses for reply are Gmail accounts conveniently created by Jiffy Gmail Creator (”Who Else Wants to Create Unlimited Gmail Accounts in Seconds Flat Without Breaking a Sweat?”) An OCR system reads the obscured text in the CAPTCHA. Automatic monitoring detects when a posting has been flagged as spam and reposts it.

CL Auto Poster isn’t the only such tool. Other desktop software products are AdBomber and Ad Master. For spammers preferring a service-oriented approach, there’s ItsYourPost.

With these power tools, the defenses of Craigslist have been overrun. Some categories on Craigslist have become over 90% spam.”

And a thousand newspaper classified ads managers say: “D’oh! Wish I’d thought of that five years ago.”