Craigslist PVA - Does Your MAC Address Affect Phone Verified Accounts?

If you use Craigslist PVA then you no doubt know that Craigslist is on a seemingly endless hunt to block and suspend accounts that it believes are being used incorrectly. For this to happen to your Craigslist phone verified account, you don't even have to have done anything questionable. Many innocent Craigslist users find their accounts suspended or blocked for no reason. There is a lot of talk about just what exactly puts phone verified accounts at Craigslist on hold and some of the most commonly believed reasons are IP activity, abuse of the actual account or website and over posting to just name a few. All of these do infact play some role in just how long a verified account lasts. However, one often overlooked way that your activity on Craigslist can potentially be tracked is via your computers MAC address. MAC addresses are rarely talked about and the average Craigslist user is probably even unaware of what it is.

A MAC address is a unique identifier or ID that is assigned to network devices. A network device could be anything that your computer uses to connect to the internet, but the most common is a network card or adapter found in most computer today. This means that the method you use to connect to the internet with, cable, DSL, dialup, wireless etc, has its own MAC address which is potentially visible to anyone with the right tools to inspect it. This is much like your computers IP and can be used to identify your computer, however, unlike an IP which can be changed easily a MAC address doesn't or very rarely changes. Most people are completely unaware their computer has a MAC address and even if they do know they don't know where to begin to change it, or if it is even possible. Depending on who you ask, some believe that it is possible for Craigslist to detect the MAC address of your computer while you are on their site. If you believe this to be true, then the obvious question is can you change your MAC address?

MAC addresses as assigned to your network card or network device. To change them you have two possible solutions. The first is to change your network device. You could plug in a new network adapter or use a different modem to connect to the internet. A much easier solution is to use software which can spoof your MAC address. This software simply allows you to change the MAC address without having to actually replace the piece of hardware.

Craigslist PVA aren't cheap and with the recent changes it becomes even more important and vital to make sure that you are doing everything you can to prolong the life of your verified accounts. If you believe that Craigslist does track phone verified account activity by logging MAC addresses, then you may want to consider looking into possible ways to change your MAC address to help prolong the life of your verified accounts.