If you are someone who is into business or someone who regularly needs to deal with classified advertisements, you might be familiar with Craigslist, which is a very popular and widely used online classified advertisements platform, which allows users to post and view different things, like jobs, housing, items for sale, different services, communities, discussion forums and much much more.
Craigslist is very beneficial for both individuals and businesses and in order to get most of the features from Craigslist, you can create an account on Craigslist. When you create an account, you are agreeing to the Terms and Conditions of using Craigslist, which is basically a set of guidelines set up by Craigslist. If you fail to comply with these terms and conditions, it would result in your account being put on hold. If you are someone whose account is put on hold, and you don’t even know the reason, this article is for you.
My Craigslist Account is on Hold
In this article, we are going to have a look at why your Craigslist account was placed on hold, what are the reasons your Craigslist Account was put on hold, and what to do if your account is placed on hold. Keep reading this article till the end, and you should get a rough idea as to why your Craigslist Account was put on hold.
What is Craigslist?
Before we move to understand why your Craigslist account was put on hold, let’s understand what is Craigslist, so that you have a rough idea of how it works, and maybe where things went wrong due to which, your account was put on hold.
So, Craigslist is an online classifieds advertisements platform, which allows users to post and view different things, like jobs, housing, items for sale, services, communities, discussion forums, and much much more. It was founded by Craig Newmark, in 1995, and now it operates in around 70 countries, including the United States, Canada, Mexico, India, and many others, and it is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. The platform is super easy to use, and with little effort, you can do a lot of things here, like posting or viewing a job, or housing, selling something, discussion forums, and much much more.
Why my Craigslist Account is put on Hold?
When you create a Craigslist account, you agree to the terms and conditions put forward by Craigslist. Craigslist is used by millions to post classifieds locally and globally, and Craigslist monitors its users in a variety of ways, from you posting your ads to creating your account.
If in any way, you are found violating the terms and conditions put forward by Craigslist, it would be subject to putting your account on hold, or maybe in the worst case, your account would be removed indefinitely. So, if you are someone who is put on hold, you would need to check whether or not you are violating any terms and conditions before attempting to reinstate your account.
Violation of terms and conditions
Before you create your account on Craigslist, you have to agree to the terms and conditions put forward by Craigslist. But when creating an account, most people just hit on the agree button as soon as they see the terms and conditions screen, but when you are using Craigslist for commercial purposes, for your businesses, it becomes important at least to get the summary of the terms and conditions, so that even unknowingly, you do not keep on doing something, which ends your account getting on hold, or even getting permanently blocked.
The terms and conditions can include something like – no advertisements for illegal activities, no pornographic images, no spamming, no discrimination for any goods and services, and many others. So, it is important that while you are using Craigslist, you should abide by the terms and conditions, so that you can make sure that nothing goes wrong.
Spamming may be one reason
You might be familiar with the creepy word “Spamming”, which may be done in multiple forms, if someone is sending the same message to the same user multiple times, that is spamming, or sending unsolicited messages to a large audience, maybe for a purpose of commercial advertisement. Spamming is something that no one would want to fall prey to, since it can be annoying, and may have no limits.
The thing is that if you are found using Craigslist to post spam content in different categories in Craigslist, you would get your account placed on hold. But what is spam content according to Craigslist? In short, Craigslist terms and conditions specify spam content as any content, or any type of post, which contains unsolicited commercial advertisements, link referral codes, or junk emails.
In basic terms, we can say that Craigslist can tell that you are posting across several categories and areas, for non-specific advertorial purposes, then your account would be put on hold by Craigslist, till further investigations.
Flagging
Craigslist is a very popular website, with millions of users across different countries, and so it is impossible for Craigslist admins to monitor every single post. So, Craigslist uses something called Flagging, to monitor the website.
When some post is offensive, spam, or a scam, or in any way violating the terms and conditions of Craigslist, the other users are asked to flag the posting, so that Craigslist is aware of the posting, and can take effective action. If you post regularly, and in case you have received a number of flags, and these flags are appropriate, then your account would be placed on hold, till further investigation, and may be completely blocked if you are doing this repetitively.
What to do if an account is placed on hold?
If you are someone whose Craigslist account has been placed on hold, this simply means that Craigslist is now going to investigate your account. In this case, if it is found that you are properly using Craigslist, with no issues, then your account will be reinstated. If you are damn sure that you haven’t in any way violated the Craigslist terms and conditions, you can even write an email to Craigslist, with your account name, and detailed description of your proper use of Craigslist.
If in case your account was never reinstated, you have been removed due to the violation. You might try creating another Craigslist account, but even that is not possible if your IP address has been blocked. If this happens, you would need a new device, and a new network, to create an account on Craigslist.
How to prevent Craigslist accounts from getting placed on hold?
If you are someone who uses Craigslist for advertisements related to their businesses, you might never want your account getting on hold anyways, so, you should take the necessary precautions before you make any posting on Craigslist.
It has been observed that if you are going as a business on Craigslist, they might not allow you to advertise unless you pay them for that. Also, you should carefully read the terms and conditions, before you even start using Craigslist, so that you can make sure that you are clean from your side, and prevent any wrongdoing from your side on Craigslist.
If your account gets placed on hold anyways, and you are confirmed as not doing any wrong, then you can contact Craigslist through an email, and get the problem solved. Make sure that spamming, scamming someone, or sending phishing links, or referral codes, these all things that can bring your Craigslist account into problems.
Conclusion
In this account, we saw the reasons why your Craigslist account is placed on hold, and what can be done in such cases. We also had a look at the precautions to avoid your account getting placed on hold. It is very necessary for any Craigslist user to understand the terms and conditions if he/she is going to be using it especially for their businesses, or even as an individual, so that they don’t do any wrongdoing even unknowingly. I hope this article could help you for why your account is kept on hold.
If your account is on hold, and you are sure that you did not violate the Craigslist terms and conditions in any way, then you can contact them through email, and get the problem solved.
FAQs related to My Craigslist Account Is On Hold
Ans: Craigslist is a popular online classified advertisements website, which allows users to post and view different things like jobs, housing, items for sale, services, discussion forums, communities, and much much more.
Ans: It is possible to even post ads without creating a Craigslist account, but when you create a Craigslist account, you have more control over the ads, like delete, edit, or re-post.
Ans: If your Craigslist account was put on hold, there can be multiple reasons, like spamming, flagging, or violating the terms and conditions.
