Watch Out for These Online Employment Scams

Times are pretty rough for citizens of the U.S. nowadays. With so many people out of work, more and more of us are becoming desperate for employment. A lot of us are using free classified sites to seek employment opportunities; Craigslist and Backpage being the most popular. In an effort to help those who are seeking legitimate opportunities to make money, and regularly visit these types of websites, I am working on a project to help protect people, from having their identities stolen as well as inform job seekers of the numerous scams that are going on today.

There are websites out there that claim to be staffing agencies, and they send inquirers an email with an attachment on it, claiming that the person needs to review the websites listed on the attachment and follow the directions, sign up to these websites, and submit a review of each site to them. They claim that doing this is somewhat of a placement test, to see if you qualify for the position. These people are professional scam artists. The truth of the matter is that, when you sign up to those sites listed in the email attachment, they get paid for it. So once you have completed their "test" and submit your review, you never end up hearing back from them. Red Star Multimedia is the first of these "staffing agencies" that come to mind. I have to hand it to them, for the fact that they have gone through the trouble of registering a domain name and setting up a website, but if you ever receive an email from them, do not waste your time. Any seasoned online business entrepreneur can spot their garbage from a mile away.

Many of us have already heard about the African organized crime rings that send emails to people, claiming to be some type of overseas attorney, seeking a beneficiary, to claim an enormous amount of money for some associate of theirs who recently passed away. This is obviously a scam! Anyone who can use common sense and can put 2 and 2 together should know that these types of proposals are just plain fake. Beware of All proposals of this kind. They will come at you in many different angles. Some claim to be attorneys, and some even claim to be an old lady with no family, dying of cancer, looking for someone to inherit her savings.

In their newest proposals, they are posting employment openings on these free classified sites, claiming to be managers and CEO's of overseas companies, who are seeking representatives in English speaking countries to collect payments from their clients for them, for a percentage of the money. When you inquire about these positions, they send you an email asking you to return your personal information to them. A professional company wouldn't request your personal information in an email, unless they provided a link for you to submit your personal info directly to their company or website. Even some seasoned online entrepreneurs will fall for this one.

As a rule of thumb, if the email doesn't seem to be from a legitimate company, it likely isn't. True professional companies will provide an address and phone/fax numbers in all of their emails, or at least the URL to their company's website. They also wouldn't send you personalized emails, meaning that a company logo of some sort should be present in all emails. Beware, and protect yourself by never freely giving out your personal information.