Last Updated on September 28, 2023 by theadmin

Is Your Craigslist IP Blocked ?

This post will hopefully answer the query received by this blog last week – “Craiglist blocked my IP address for no reason! What do I do ?”  Firstly unless you’re very unlucky it’s highly unlikely that anyone would get their IP blocked on Craigslist for no reason.  What will have happened is your account or IP address will have been used in breach of Craigslist terms of use.  Things like posting duplicate adverts or engaging in overly commercial promotions will normally be the case.  If someone shares your internet connection it might not even be you.  Whatever the reason, it’s easy to fix and if you read this post you’ll discover how to start using Craigslist again and how to fully exploit it’s potential using proxies.

How to Unblock Craigslist Access

Need to know how to unblock your IP address from Craigslist? Well, don’t worry you’re definitely not alone and this article will show you what to do. In fact Craigslist blocks literally thousands of addresses every day for a huge variety of reasons. First of all it’s important to understand what happens when you first visit the site.

The main site is of course at https://www.craigslist.org/ which is an international portal, which page you see is dependent on where you are. If the site is allowed to use your location, then you’ll be redirected based on where your IP address is registered. So if you visit using the connection from a UK IP then your front page will look something like this –

My UK IP address has been detected and I have been carefully routed through to the UK Craigslist pages.  Although I can browse through any Craigslist directory in the world, as far as posting adverts this is the location my account is tied to.  Craigslist want to protect it’s unique local directory feel so will actively stop people trying to use it as a global advertising platform.  It’s all about creating thousands of local community directories.  You might want to post an advert for your software all across the globe but Craigslist will do it’s utmost to block and ban your IP address if you try.

Craigslist Block IPs

Craigslist has one of the most advanced security detection systems – it primarily looks out for unwanted behavior.  If detected that user account will be blocked very quickly and there are a variety of reasons that this might happen.  In fact if you just use Craigslist directory too often then your account could be blocked for commercial behavior too. Other reasons include trying to scrape data from their directories, posting duplicate adverts or posting to the wrong regions.

Also don’t try using multiple accounts to bypass this without hiding your tracks.  If Craigslist detects that the same connection is using lots of accounts that IP address will be blocked completely which will be a nuisance if you can’t change yours easily.

Craigslist is actually a goldmine for lots of online businesses offering a global portal to sell your goods very cheaply.  However they don’t want this to happen and will do their utmost to detect and block multiple and commercial advertising across their platform.  remember a large part of this detection system is based on the IP address that you connect with, which is why proxies can be used to unlock the potential of this huge directory site!

So How to Unblock Your IP Address From Craigslist

Like many of us, I learnt the hard way of what you can or can’t do on Craigslist.  My first attempt involved placing the same adverts across a wide selection of US cities for my digital product. This didn’t last long before  my adverts were all deleted and my account became blacklisted too (for posting adverts at least).  I’d done all this from a single home PC without ever looking at the terms and conditions.  I was however surprised at the ruthless efficiency in which my adverts were hunted down and my account blocked.   What’s more all subsequent accounts created ended up being blocked without me doing anything.  This I discovered was because not only was my account blocked but my IP address too which meant any new accounts suffered the same fate!

Every single day lots of people go through the same process, they identify the possibilities of selling on Craigslist and then get their account deleted the same day.  It’s usually posting across different locations or spamming the same advert across the network – it doesn’t take very long to lose your account doing either of these.

 Remember if your IP address is blocked then any account created using that address will be useless too.   

Frustrating, huh !  Especially when you consider that Craigslist offers inexpensive access to markets in 70 countries and 500 cities across the globe.  Craigslist is a potential goldmine for anyone who has products or services which can be sold or shipped internationally.   Drop shippers are just one example but there are many, many others. But it is possible to access these markets it just takes a little thought and effort.

The crucial factor is of course to control what IP address you access from which is actually fairly simple to do using a proxy server.  When you connect through a proxy server then Craigslist will see it’s IP address not your real one, as long as the proxy is configured properly.  It’s not actually difficult to find a proxy service to use, there are thousands of them! However the crucial point is finding a service which has IP addresses that work with Craigslist.

The Perfect Craigslist IP Address Proxy

Here’s a quick rundown of what you need from your proxies –

• Target Different Locations – to post to the San Francisco directory you’ll need an IP address in that area.  It can’t just be a US IP address!  This is the most difficult aspect of finding proxies that work as not many allow you to configure IP addresses to a city level.
• Clean IP Address – doesn’t matter which area the IP address is in if it’s already blocked or banned by Craigslist.
• Dedicated IP address – sharing with thousands of other people using the same addresses concurrently won’t work.  It will look very suspicious and you know what will happen to your account!
• Sticky IP address – many great proxies are rotating ones, which switch IP addresses automatically to avoid concurrent use and keep your connection fresh.  However this doesn’t work well with Craigslist especially if you switch to a different IP location in the middle of posting an advert.  You must have the ability to have a ‘sticky IP’ or ensure that the switch stays in the same location.
• Residential IP addresses – this is not 100% essential but definitely desirable.  Residential proxies are much less likely to get flagged than those with datacentre IP address, which are often flagged as proxy servers automatically.

Because of these restrictions many great proxy services simply won’t work well with Craigslist.  It’s mostly because of the ability to target specific locations to a city level, very, very few proxy services have the networks or functionality to allow this.

Two Great Proxies for Craiglist Unblocking

There are actually only really two major providers which the main Craigslist professionals use –

Bright Data – (previously known as Luminati)the largest residential IP provider which has a huge 40 million residential IP addresses. Using the proxy manager you can target specific locations and make your IP address ‘sticky’ meaning it won’t rotate as quickly.

Smartproxy – probably the next largest proxy network with over 10 million residential IPs in 195 locations (including most US cities).  again they offer the ability to target addresses in specific regions (and rotate between them) or allow up to ten minutes as a ‘static or sticky IP address.

Both will work perfectly to bypass Craigslist IP block  as long as you configure them correctly, ask their support for help if needed.  Both can give you almost unlimited residential IP addresses which you can use manually or through automated Craigslist posting software.

With the right proxy service and as long as you’re careful you can unlock the global gold mine that is Craigslist however finally a word of warning.  If you do anything illegal or start spamming with the same accounts then switching IP addresses won’t actually help as the accounts will be deleted almost immediately.  You can post plenty of adverts but just mix them across accounts and IP addresses and don’t overdo it.    You see many people on forums and helps sites complaining that craigslist blocked my IP for nor reason, it’s never true and there is usually a very simple explanation.  Keep a low profile and spread you business across multiple digital identities though and you will be fine.