How to Detect and Avoid Work From Home Scams

What are work from home scams?

Technological advances have made remote work opportunities available to job seekers all over the world. These roles offer greater convenience and flexibility than traditional office jobs and are preferred by freelancers, employees with growing families and many others who benefit from the flexible nature of working from home.

But home jobs can be used as a way to carry out scams. Fake employers pretend to have jobs available that allow job seekers to work remotely. Instead, job seekers are tasked with facilitating questionable and often illegal businesses.

What is the risk for you?

Some people may be willing to “try” the seemingly wrong work-from-home job simply because they don’t think there will be any real risks facing them. However, taking this approach could end badly. Work-from-home scams carry many risks for you, including long-term financial losses. A fraudster seeking to make large purchases on your penny might advertise a work-from-home job and ask you to submit your credit card information, which can severely damage credit.

How to spot them

Work-from-home scams often include hard-to-believe “perks”, such as a large paycheck for minimal work. You may also find that the job posting requires you to call 1-800 for more information about the opportunity or that you must pay a “startup” fee to get started.

Work from home scams usually encourage the job seeker to move quickly to secure the opportunity. Phrases such as “call today”, “apply now”, or “earn money fast” may be displayed because scammers do not want you to have time to become suspicious of the opportunity. Instead, they want you to quickly submit your personal information, conduct the interview, and then hand it in. Job advertisements that require you to move faster than you feel comfortable with cannot be trusted.

6 major red flags

1. Cashing bad checks

This scam requires the employee to deposit illegally obtained funds and transfer funds to international recipients as an “Account Manager” or “Sales Representative”. It relies on the employee transferring the stolen money from one scam to another while hiding the identity of both parties.

2. Cash Back Plan

In this scam, the scammer will send the home employee a very large check to start up their office (ie $3,500 instead of $1,500). The scammer will ask the person to cash the check but send a smaller check to cover the difference. Eventually, the first check will bounce from the fraudster, but the fraudster will have already cashed the real counter check that the employee sent.

3. Stuffing the envelopes

If you’ve ever held a management job, chances are you’ve packed a few envelopes and wouldn’t find the opportunity to work from home suspicious. However, an opportunity like this should cause concern because employees have to pay start-up fees. Then, they begin filling out envelopes to earn income, but find that a series of “loops” that the scammer fails to mention prevent them from ever getting compensated. Be wary of this classic hoax and its modern cousin, “forwarding emails.”

4. Data entry

Data entry is another common work job, but no one should be to push you to perform this task. This “paid” opportunity may come with the promise of training materials and resources to get the employee started, but in the end, employees find they’ve wasted money on supplies they couldn’t use in a less profitable job without leads.

5. Pyramid scheme

The evolution of scams like this actually takes the form of a pyramid. If you answer this job posting, you will learn that the only way to make money is to attract others and benefit from their joining, thus building the pyramid. The problem with pyramid schemes is that the product or service promoted by existing members to recruit new members is rarely rooted in anything substantial. Job seekers who become involved with the hope of earning an honest income usually discover the illegality of a product or service until it is too late.

6. Parcel sending

Any time someone asks you to send or receive packages that you can’t verify the contents of, you should indicate that as a red flag. Most employers, remote or otherwise, are not willing to pay an employee just to handle packages. Moreover, the details surrounding the parcels are usually vague; You won’t know exactly where they are going, who they are, or what purpose they serve. This scam may require you to pay money to get started and the chances of getting a real salary from this job are very slim. Furthermore, your public record may be at risk if the authorities can link you to any illegal activity related to parcels.

Precautions to be taken

Protect yourself from work-from-home scams by learning as much as you can about working from home. Connect with your network of friends, family, and colleagues to gauge their knowledge of companies that offer legitimate remote work. If you come across a home business opportunity that seems questionable, someone in your network may be able to tell you if they’ve encountered the organization and how their experience went.

Finding a reputable home business starts with your search queries. Telecommuting is a convenience that many jobs offer, but searching specifically for “work from home jobs” sends a message to the search engine (and the scammers) that telecommuting is your primary interest. Scammers include these words in their job titles and postings because they hope people will be so interested in working at home that they will take advantage of any opportunity that comes their way. Try to use search queries that target the nature of the business, not just the location. To do this, try to diversify the terms you use. Instead of “work from home,” try search terms like farAnd Distance workingAnd Distance working.

Trust your instincts. As an avid job seeker, you’ve reviewed dozens (maybe hundreds) of job postings. You now have a trained eye when it comes to deciphering what’s real vs. what’s real. forged. This, along with your natural instincts to point you out when something is wrong, can help you defend yourself against work-from-home scams.

Resources and reports

Not only does the FTC serve as a useful resource, but it is also an agency through which job seekers can file reports about work-from-home scams. You can Report fraud to the FTC online. arrive to The best office work (BBB) ​​to check the legitimacy of the companies you find offering work from home. A company listed in the BBB Certified Business Directory has been thoroughly screened and assigned a letter score based on its interaction with the public.

ZipRecruiter Help keep our community safe

At ZipRecruiter, we care about our community and its safety. If you encounter a suspicious job posting, please let us know by clicking the “Report Job” link at the bottom of the posting, or email us to report any spam or fraudulent activity on ZipRecruiter at trustandsafety@ziprecruiter.com.