What’s the difference between a real job and the horde of fake ones found on the internet?
It’s even more basic than the fact that one is fake – fake jobs are suspiciously easy to get interviews for.
These hiring scams sound like child’s play. Post fake employment opportunities on legitimate job sites, which link to spoofed sites impersonating known brands, which in turn leads to an email offering a teleconference ‘interview’ from an imaginary HR department.
Next comes the job offer, but only after collecting the applicant’s social security number, a scan of their driving license and – the important bit – a credit-card fee to cover the recruitment, training, or background checks they are told will be reimbursed by their new employer.
That never happens because there is no employer to pay them back, and of course, no job.
These scams date back to the earliest days of the internet but seem to be getting, if not more common, then a lot more ambitious.
This week the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) put out its latest warning about the fake job problem about which it has received numerous complaints over the past year.
What’s surprising is that financial losses now run to almost $3,000 per victim, plus the loss of personally identifiable information (PII) which can be abused for years.
But why do people keep falling for them?
It’s a matter of speculation but one possibility is the widespread notion that the internet has created plenty of quick-and-dirty jobs that only get advertised on unusual channels.