Study finds online sites lag in detecting rental scams
Craigslist caught fewer than half of obvious scams, NYU researchers report
- James R. Hood for Consumer Affairs March 1st, 2016
- Source: https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/study-finds-online-sites-lag-in-detecting-rental-scams-030116.html
Trying to rent an apartment in New York, San Francisco, or any other high-cost city where housing is in high demand can be very tricky. It doesn't make it any easier when rental listing sites fail to weed out scam artists and tricksters.
Yet when researchers from New York University's Tandon School of Engineering studied more than two million New York City apartment rental listings on Craiglist, they found that the site caught only 47 percent of those deemed to be fake. Suspicious postings lingered for as long as 20 hours before being removed.
