The Impact Of Craigslist Implementing A Different Captcha System

Sometime last week, Craigslist has implemented another captcha system and it's called reCaptcha. This has created problems for those who use auto-posters to post ads on Craigslist automatically instead of doing it manually. What this does is it renders most automation of their Craigslist posting virtually useless.

The reCaptcha module that Craigslist deployed was started in the Los Angeles area in the Jobs category, but it eventually spread out throughout all cities. Craigslist advertisers then rewrote their ads and put it in either the Service or the For Sale categories. About a week later, it went to all categories.

Recently, they included the reCaptcha challenge in the creation of the Craigslist accounts. Thus when you either post an ad or need to create a Craigslist account, you would need to answer the reCaptcha challenge to be successful.

For those of you who still post on Craigslist manually, there is no impact. However, if you're blasting 400 ads a day, there is a definite impact since the new captcha challenge requires you to enter two words instead of one. Because research shows that there's only a 15% success rate at the most, it makes it difficult for computer programs to recognize the new method that it's now using and even a human being has problems reading the captcha image being displayed.

Does that mean that your auto-posting days are over? Probably not. It becomes more challenging though. Programmers have modified their software programs to allow their users to enter the answer to the reCaptcha challenge. I'm sure there's a way around it because someone will eventually find a way around the reCaptcha function that Craigslist is now using. Google has tried it with their Gmail captcha challenge but others have already solved it. The answer to the reCaptcha challenge would be a matter of time. But some programmers have conceded that it's unsolvable at this time.

Note that Craigslist encourage you to market your products and services locally and if your answer to the reCaptcha challenge is close enough, you've pretty much answered it successfully.

For example, if the reCaptcha challenge shows the words "We're Successful", you can type the following answers and you have basically answered the challenge:

• weresuccessful
• we're successful
• were successful
• Or any combination of upper or lower case characters since the reCaptcha challenge is not case sensitive.

But I tell you, programmers who sell autoposters are scrambling to find a solution and the closest they get to is do some recoding so that it gives them an interface to type in the answer to the challenge.

Another solution is to contract the function to have someone else enter the answer to the captcha code. That means that someone at the other end must have the program that interacts with the autoposting software that you use. That means you pay for that function and it won't be cheap.

Nevertheless, autoposting continues unless Craigslist comes up with another snag.

However, if you're still posting on Craigslist and you have trouble getting your ads up, we at Classified Ad Masters have an answer to your problems. We also have a way to keep you posting effectively as possible.