Employment Scams: How to Avoid Them

Employment fraud has been around for quite some time. Whether you fell for one or not, you’ve probably encountered them before. Many credible job posting and job listing websites still lack strong new account verification processes that allow scammers to easily create fake profiles. The hot job market and ongoing pandemic stress is a perfect recipe for bad actors to swindle job seekers out of money.

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Americans were scammed out of $68 million in the first quarter of 2022 due to bogus business and employment opportunities. This begs the question; How can we avoid falling for employment scams? Let’s consider some tips to protect ourselves and raise our awareness of such scams.

Personal Recruitment

Scammers often take direct action by contacting their victims via phone, phishing emails, or even social media. They may pose as a recruiter or as part of a staffing or temp agency looking for candidates to fill open “vacancies”. Scammers can also pretend to be from a trusted company and link their “website” in the message. However, these links can lead victims to a fake website created by the scammers to create a sense of legitimacy.

During conversations, the scammer can claim that they are not on personal or secure video calls. Instead, interviews are conducted through conference call applications that use email addresses instead of phone numbers. They may also request that a fee be paid to proceed with the interview process, background screening, “starter kits” or onboarding.

When a victim embarks on a fake job placement, they can reveal highly sensitive information such as their social security number. This would allow a malicious actor to steal the victim’s identity.

Tempting job descriptions

All too often scammers try to make their supposed job opportunities look as enticing as possible. The offer may seem almost guaranteed, with promises of low-effort get-rich-quick schemes and bountiful returns. One job “perk” a scammer can promise is the ability to work from home with a “flexible work schedule.” Common work from home scams to watch out for include:

exchange fraud. These may be referred to as “quality control managers” or virtual personal assistants. Once you are “employed”, your job is to receive shipments to your home. They will then repackage these products and reship them to a different address, often overseas. The company will often promise you that you will get your paycheck after you have worked a certain amount of time. By the time the victim realizes the check isn’t coming, the scammer is long gone.

resale of goods. Victims are told that they can make money by buying discounted branded products from the fake company and then resell the goods for a profit. After paying for the “products” in question, however, the package never arrives and the employer can no longer be reached.

Fake check fraud

Malicious actors can also use fake job postings for nannies, caregivers, virtual assistants, or mystery shoppers. According to the FTC, these could be fronts for fake check fraud. Often a scammer will send the victim a check and ask them to deposit it. Shortly after, the scammer will provide a reason why they want some of the money back (e.g. you were overpaid or they charge a starting equipment fee).

The FTC states that a reputable employer will never ask you to do this. So this can only mean that the check received is fake. Because banks are required by law to make deposited funds available quickly, the scammer hopes the victim will return the funds before realizing the check has bounced. Once this is done, the victim either has lost money or worse, money that now needs to be paid back to the bank.

How to avoid employment fraud

We’ve discussed just a few of the many ways scammers can use employment scams to fool their victims. With that in mind, here are a few red flags to help us spot and avoid job scams:

• Unsolicited job offers from companies with little to no internet presence. Your “website” may be linked, but be careful. This could simply be a fake website or even just a malicious URL. If you want to see if the company is legit, try visiting their website yourself by typing it into a browser.
• Job offers and descriptions seem too good to be true and guarantee large returns in a short time.
• Incorrect domain names or email addresses. If a scammer is posing as a legitimate company, the email address they are sending from probably contains misspellings. This is often difficult to see at first glance. Also, beware of standard @gmail or @yahoo email addresses used by “employer”. A company will never contact you with a personal email.
• Messages asking you to pay a fee or provide personal information to access more information about the job or start-up materials.
• Interviews are only conducted in teleconferencing apps using email addresses instead of phone numbers. Not done in person or via a secure video call.
• Potential employers will ask you to pay back part of the money sent to you by check.

Awareness leads to more security

As you may know, October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. There are many different facets that make up cybersecurity. Prioritizing steps like using strong passwords, using a password manager, or using a VPN. These are particularly useful for businesses and individuals.

In this article, we discussed how scammers might try to violate our personal security through employment fraud. By learning about them, they share important tips consistent with cybersecurity, such as: B. raising awareness of phishing, practicing safe clicking and of course protecting your personal information.

By increasing our awareness of malicious actors’ tactics, we are better equipped to protect ourselves when confronted by a scammer.

At Social Engineer LLC, our goal is to bring education and awareness to all technology users. For a detailed list of our services and how we can help you achieve your information/cybersecurity goals, please visit:

https://www.Social-Engineer.com/Managed-Services/

*** This is a syndicated blog from Security Through Education’s Security Bloggers Network, written by Social-Engineer. Read the original post at: https://www.social-engineer.org/social-engineering/employment-scams-how-to-avoid-them/