Thank you!

Half the time I cannot even read the stuff...

It's just irritating in my opinion.  If someone wants to make their ad stand out, put their name and number in the subject line; make it as easy as possible for your potential clients.

Craigslist prohibits phone numbers, I guess, so they do that to spoof the system.

Actually, there are a number of reasons to mask a phone number...

I know I mask mine otherwise I'm able to be googled. I mostly do it for the security of my clients. Here's a scenario that happened to a client of mine 2 years ago:

"Jim" was going through a divorce. His soon to be ex-wife is "Sally". Sallys attorney asks her for phone records when she expresses her suspisions about affairs. She brings them along with a throw-away phone she found in his truck while snooping through his things before he moved out.

Sallys attorney runs the numbers through an Internet search to find Jim has been calling escort after escort while Sally was on business trips.

End of story: Jim lost everything. Sally (despite her lack of being a sexually gratifying wife), comes out of it the hero who put up with "Jim the Sicko".

We all benefit from discretion. Adding numbers and spelling them out ads to EVERYONES SAFETY!

There are horror stories from both sides. On the provider side, I know a girls friend who lost her phone while out one night. Noticed her friends phone in a drawer and used it to call her phone to get it to ring so she could find it. Later when she found her phone she was puzzeled by the number and did a simple Google search to find her friends "side-business" along with the reviews.

.02

For example, it would make it harder for someone running a search to discover that the same ad is running at the same time in multiple cities.