Can You Make Numerous Craigslist Accounts?

Craigslist considers itself a community resource and structures many of its policies and practices accordingly. Although listings for therapeutic services undergo manual ad-by-ad pre-posting approval by Craigslist staff, most of the ads you read on the site go through volunteer monitoring by site visitors. If an ad or advertiser breaks the Craigslist rules, any visitor can click on an ad page link to report the infraction through a practice that Craigslist calls flagging. An ad that accrues too many flags faces automatic deletion. The flagging standards constitute proprietary information, so you won't find posted statistics about how many flags add up to too many. The totals vary depending on factors that include the community site on which the ad appears and the ad category in question. Along with fraud, miscategorization and other infractions, flaggers look for any other signs of rules violation. If you post in the Craigslist help forums, mentioning the use of multiple posting accounts will draw a swift citation of the terms of use.

The Craigslist Terms of Use govern your conduct on the site and in the ads you post. They explicitly forbid any subscriber from opening more than one account and from listing ads on anyone else's behalf. Just because you know someone who claims to have two separate Craigslist accounts or find a blog post that discusses how to sign up multiple times doesn't make the practice viable or acceptable under the Craigslist rules and regulations. If the content of your ads somehow betrays a shared source between listings associated with different accounts, you face flagging or worse.

Along with the potential loss of posting privileges and involuntary closure of Craigslist accounts, people who violate the terms of use also face the prospect of liquidated damages. The rules that spell out these monetary penalties enable Craigslist to impose fines that range from $25 up to $25,000 for a wide variety of infringements. Maintaining more than one account can carry a $100 penalty for each account and each instance in which you use it to post.

If you're considering opening more than one account to separate your personal from your business activity on Craigslist, don't risk losing your posting privileges. You can accomplish your objectives and still follow the rules. To keep your identity confidential, take advantage of Craigslist's anonymization feature. When you use it, Craigslist generates a randomized email address to which prospective buyers reply and forward messages to you, keeping your real email address private until you reply. To minimize or even eliminate the consequences of that disclosure, open a throwaway address through a free email provider.