I have written here often enough about work at home scams. Recently I had one try to contact me. I didn’t fall for it, of course, but I had a little fun confirming that this amazing job offer was in fact the scam I knew it to be. I’m sharing this story of unmasking a work at home scam so that you can see how tempting scammers try to be. There will be screenshots.

I knew from the moment I opened the email that I was going to have some fun with this. It’s not often I get such a perfect example of a scam. It was well tailored to my career interests in remote jobs working for someone else. They claimed that I had applied on Indeed. That is one of the problems with online job hunting – you and the scammers are in the same places, and they know what you want. They can look perfectly legitimate at first glance. But then…

The Work at Home Scam Email Unmasked

I knew from the moment I opened this email that the job was not real. I’ll quote it here, with the company name and other info redacted. Take a moment and see if you can figure out what’s wrong:

Hello Stephanie

We acknowledged the receipt of your application via Our Indeed job board and we want you to know that your service is required. We feel that your qualifications are in line with being a suitable applicant for the available Content Creator job. I have included a concise description of this position in the attachment below. 

Job ID: Content Creator

Company:  *********
Company Website: *********

Functional Area: Creatives.
Wage: $85./hr.
Type: Full-Time Job.
Location: USA (can be telecommuted)

Note: Following our newest online screening method introduced by the Better Business Bureau considering the Covid-19 pandemic, You are required to sign up for “MICROSOFT TEAMS” business messenger on your Mobile Phone or Personal Computer. This is also our official secure channel for online business interview conduct so visit Microsoft teams website on any browser to sign up. Proceed immediately to set up and then add your interview manager up on MICROSOFT TEAMS business messenger with

Email:**********************  Name: ********* ******. I will be your interviewer and I will also provide you with a thorough description of the open positions and their duties attached to this email. If you run into difficulties setting up your account with Microsoft teams, send me a reply and I will provide you with needed assistance.

Thank you, and best of luck with your interview!
******** Talent Acquisition Team

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE:
This is a transmission of ********* and may contain information that is confidential and proprietary. If you are not the addressee, any disclosure, copying or distribution, or use of the contents of this message is expressly prohibited.

CAUTION:
Internet and e-mail communications are ********* reserves the right to retrieve and read any message created, sent, and received. reserves the right to monitor messages by authorized  Associates at any time without any further consent, Your reference code is (EHR-109), this will serve as your identification number throughout the online hiring process.

Best Regards,

******** *******
*********

Talent Acquisition Team

There was also a PDF attachment. I have redacted a lot of irrelevant information, as this scam was imitating a legitimate company, and I do not want their name dragged through the mud by this. It’s not their fault. If the email wasn’t enough to tell you what was wrong, these might do it.

Do you see it now? I hope so, but let’s review the signs anyhow.

The Anatomy of a Work at Home Scam Email

The first thing I noticed was the request to use Microsoft Teams… excuse me… MICROSOFT TEAMS. I’ve used Teams before on legitimate interviews, but it can be a sign of a scam as well, especially in all caps like that. Also, most people don’t capitalize mobile phone or personal computer. The pay rate was a clue as well. It was rather on the high side. Also, the email address used was similar but not identical to the real company’s domain. Add in some grammatical errors, and I knew what I had.

Blog post inspiration, for those who are wondering. That’s what I had.

The point where they said my service was required also caught my attention. Seriously, who would say that to a job applicant??? And of course, when I’ve had legitimate remote job interviews, they’ve discussed a time with me and then sent a link to join them in the online meeting.

I use Gmail, which scans attachments, so I felt comfortable opening it. Opening attachments can be a risk, so I rarely do so. But this time I wanted to see what more they had to say. It was gold, pure gold, at least when you’re looking for a scam to mock.

I particularly loved the equipment section. Who wouldn’t love an employer who provided you with all this?

Ϡ iMac 2021 24” (M1 Chip Processor)
Ϡ MacBook Pro 16” Core i7
Ϡ Company branded HP Color Laser-Jet Pro
Ϡ Jabra Engage 65 Mono Wireless Headset System
Ϡ Fellowes Power-shred MS-450Cs
Bundled Software List:
Ϡ Virtual Presence 2.0 Video Conferencing Pro
Ϡ Adobe photoshop, light room, final cut pro, Norton
Ghost v18.0 & Office 365 Home Premium

I mean, an iMac and a MacBook Pro! Sounds great!

But this also leads to the exact point where the scam would hit anyone who fell for it. Check this part out:

Upon hire, you will start with pre-training which is an integral part of your startup period where you’ll complete various task(s) assigned by your team leader and complete all customary steps to have your home office set up and get you started. To compensate for your time and effort on these tasks you will be rewarded with a sign up bonus which comes included in your start up funding.
A thorough background check will be completed before your supervisor assists you in applying for your start up funding from finance. Once the application is approved, you will receive your start up funding which is to be used to procure your working equipment and software suites pack to get your home office set up and so you proceed to training immediately. You will be receiving your shipment via FedEx transit and following this our authorized vendor’s installers will connect with you over the phone to arrange a convenient time with you for them to come over to set up your workstation on the next business day from the day you receive your shipment and they’ll provide you with any technical assistance you might need with the use and management of any of the equipment installed and setup for you.

If you aren’t familiar with this type of scam, it’s called a fake check scam. It’s one of the classics.

They send you a check. You deposit it and buy the equipment from their vendor. Not only do you never receive the equipment, but the check bounces and you’re on the hook for the entire amount. The scammer has their money because you paid the vendor, but you’re out however much you paid. The check bounce can take weeks to months, so you may not even realize what happened until it is much too late.

That’s why they offer such a wonderful home office setup. It allows them to send you a bigger check, and they get all that money from you. Some will even have you send any excess back to them, so you lose even more money. And don’t forget the fees your bank will charge for all this. All those awful, awful fees. It’s a nightmare.

Sometimes your bank account will even be closed as a result of falling for this kind of scam. It makes you look like a bad risk to your bank, so they don’t want you as a customer anymore.

If you want to learn more about this, the FTC has a great resource about the fake check scam and what you should do if you fall for one.

And of course, their direct deposit form is a risk as well. It could expose you to further fraud.

There are a few other points I could make from the PDF, but these are sufficient to make the fraud obvious. You can work at unmasking a work at home scam yourself if you want to give it a go.

Doing Your Due Diligence

Now, I want to make it clear that I checked very carefully that this was a scam before writing all of this. That’s because I would hate to post this and be wrong. This kind of due diligence can save you from work at home scams. All I had to do was find the real company and an appropriate person to contact about it.

Which I did.

Unsurprisingly, the company was quick to confirm that it was a scam. They were pleased that I had taken the time to contact them and asked that I please report the scam appropriately. Which I also did. For reference, in the United States, that’s:

• FBI – Internet Crime Complaint Center (C3) –  https://www.ic3.gov/  
• Federal Trade Commission –  https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/  
• Your state’s attorney general’s office consumer protection division.

Don’t bother with places like the Better Business Bureau. They’re irrelevant for scams in particular. After all, it’s not this particular business running a scam – it’s someone pretending to be them. If you have a problem with a business in your state, you’re better off going to the attorney general’s office consumer protection division, rather than contacting the BBB.

For remote work job offers, there are several items you can check, as I did above. Domain name, email address, job description, starting salary, grammar… these things can give solid hints about whether or not the job is legitimate.

You can also ask friends or family members what they think, especially if you aren’t sure that you’re understanding the job offer completely. Someone who doesn’t stand to gain from the opportunity may see more clearly than you do. Take your time; few legitimate job offers are that urgent, especially in the first contact before any interviews. Scams, on the other hand, are almost always urgent, so they can get you before you have time to think.

Staying Vigilant in the Digital Workplace

The increased demand for remote work that Covid-19 created helped increase the sheer volume of work at home scams out there. Scammers are quick to spot a need they can exploit. Whenever lots of people are out of work, more scams pop up.

That’s why I decided to unmask this work at home scam in detail. Hopefully, it is helpful to see exactly what these scams look like.

As you seek remote work opportunities, be alert to the risks. Any job opportunity that sounds too good to be true probably is. Scammers know that greed and desperation are their friends.

I would love for my readers to share their experiences with unmasking a work at home scam, whether they fell for it or not. The more we help each other learn, the more other people will have a chance to avoid being scammed. I generally suggest avoiding naming names unless it is a company that is consistently scamming job seekers. A situation such as the one in the email I received, I don’t think it’s fair to the company whose name was abused to include them in a discussion like this. Naming and shaming only works when it’s about the people at fault.

The post Unmasking a Work at Home Scam: My Firsthand Experience appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

For one reason or another, envelope stuffing is one of those jobs that a lot of people look for when they want to work at home. Usually, they become quite discouraged by the lack of such jobs available. Aren’t there any legitimate envelope stuffing jobs out there?

Sorry to say, not really, at least not when you see them advertised. The usual “envelope stuffing job” you see out there is a scam. You put up ads around town, in the newspaper or online, then mail people instructions on how to do the same for a fee. It’s not a legitimate job and it can get you into trouble. Just take a look at this article on the FTC’s website about a promoter of an envelope stuffing opportunity and the legal trouble he got himself into.

What Does The Envelope Stuffing Scam Involve?

Your basic envelope stuffing scam is pretty simple. You see an ad somewhere for an envelope stuffing job. It says you can earn a few dollars for every envelope stuffed.

What a great opportunity! Almost too good to be true.

Actually, entirely too good to be true.

You send away for the information, paying a little money to do so. You get back a package teaching you how to draw others into envelope stuffing.

That’s right. No employer. No instructions on getting employers to hire you to mail things for them. Just instructions on scamming others as you have been scammed.

Why Are Envelope Stuffing Opportunities Always Scams?

The reason why these opportunities are always scams is because machines stuff envelopes faster and cheaper than humans can. It’s simply not cost effective for businesses to regularly hire people to stuff envelopes for them.

If you think about it, the claim that you can make a few dollars per envelope stuffed doesn’t even make sense in terms of legitimate advertising. Just think about it. Does it really make sense for a business to pay $3 or so per envelope stuffed? Not even if you include postage for a standard letter. A machine can do it for far cheaper, and the business can probably get bulk rates on their mailings.

Don’t Believe The Testimonials

Just because an opportunity has testimonials from people who say they’ve earned good money through the opportunity doesn’t mean they have. Testimonials are easy to fake. They’re just words. Anyone willing to promote an envelope stuffing scam isn’t going to stress about the laws against using false testimonials.

Aren’t There Any Legitimate Envelope Stuffing Jobs At Home?

Once in a long while, you can find a business willing to hire an individual to do their mailings for them. The pay rate is naturally far less than what you see in an envelope stuffing scam.

Some office jobs may also include envelope stuffing as a part of the job. Just a part. That’s because most jobs really don’t need it done enough to hire people as their only job. If they do, they’re probably going to have machines do it. There may also be mail room jobs, but once again, that’s not what the scam ads mean by stuffing envelopes.

If you want to earn money mailing out advertisements for other businesses, you’ll probably have to make your own opportunity. Contact small, local businesses and see if they’d like help in that area. You might find something. It won’t be as easy as the scams like to make it sound, as that’s a lot of work to just find someone to hire you, but it may not be impossible. Just don’t call it envelope stuffing when it’s really about helping a business advertise.

Don’t worry, however. You have plenty of alternatives to stuffing envelopes if you want to work at home. Finding legitimate work at home jobs has always been a challenge. Don’t trust anyone who makes it sound exceptionally easy. Take your time and don’t get scammed.

The post Where Are The Legitimate Envelope Stuffing Jobs? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

Scams are a huge problem for work at home job seekers. Business and job opportunity scams in general are in the FTC’s top 10 fraud complaints. The number of complaints soared during the COVID pandemic, unsurprisingly, as many people were desperate to find work, especially remote work. If you’re looking for a way to work at home, this guide to scams should help you avoid many of them.

These scams come in a variety of types. As you can see in the graph below, scams involving jobs and employment agencies increased greatly during the pandemic. Other categories increased as well, but not nearly as much. Business and work at home opportunity scams pretty much bounced around their usual levels.

According to the FTC, the percentage of people reporting a financial loss from these scams is at about 33%, with a median loss of $1800 for the most recent numbers. You can find the graph here.

Obviously, most of us don’t have $1800 or more just lying around to lose to a scam. That’s why job seekers need to keep alert as they look for work.

Here are some ways to recognize that someone might be trying to scam you as you look for a work at home job.

A Helpful Guide to Scam-Spotting

They Really Want Your Bank Account Information

There comes a point with a new job where you will probably need to share your bank account information with your new employer. It’s reasonable to share your bank account information when you’re signing up for direct deposit of your paycheck with your new job. Direct deposit makes getting paid so much easier, especially when you work at home. Otherwise, you have to wait for your check to come through the mail.

But an employer who is interested in your bank account information before you’re even hired is more likely to be a problem. If they’re more interested in your bank account information than your qualifications for the job, it’s probably a scam.

Don’t share your bank information until you are confident that the job is the real thing. This isn’t always easy to figure out, but pay attention to what your potential employer is saying and doing to figure out if they’re real. A real job will probably have you fill out tax forms and other paperwork relating to your new job along with a direct deposit form.

Email Address Isn’t From the Company Domain

Many popular work at home companies now have warnings on their websites about scammers pretending to be with them. One of the simplest ways to recognize this scam is when they use an email address from someplace other than that company’s domain name. Usually, it’s a free email service such as Yahoo or Gmail. Others will register a similar domain and try to fool you with emails from that server.

If you think you’re in contact with a company about a job, but you aren’t certain, check the email address you’re communicating to them with. If it’s not clear that they’re legitimate, contact the company on your own, through a source you know is legitimate. A contact link or form on their website would be a good choice once you know you have the right website. These companies would rather you contact them and ask, right or wrong. Both of you will be happier knowing that you aren’t going to be scammed and blame the wrong people because the scammers fooled you. No business appreciates getting negative reviews for things that aren’t their fault.

Pay Is Too High For the Work

Being overpaid sounds so nice, but it doesn’t happen for most of us, especially for the kinds of jobs offered in “easy work at home” scams. They’re often oddly simple sounding jobs claiming to pay thousands of dollars a month, or hundreds for a basic task.

It’s just not realistic. No matter how desperate you are to earn money from home, be realistic, especially about earnings. It will save you a lot of trouble in the long run.

Any time a job offer or business opportunity sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If the work is too easy and/or the pay is too high, be careful. There’s likely a reason you feel that way.

The use of all capital letters or lots of dollar signs or exclamation points are indicators of a scam as well. Real job listings don’t need them.

They Want You to Pay

Be extra careful any time a potential employer wants you to pay for anything as a part of applying for that job. Sometimes it’s legitimate. There are employers who expect you to pay for a background check and are legitimate.

Others are just a scam. They’ll have an application fee or something along those lines, with the excuse that they need to make sure you are seriously interested in the job. An employer should pay you, and the costs associated with finding new employees should be on them, not on applicants.

They Send You a Check to Buy Your Own Equipment

Some of the best remote jobs provide you with equipment. This ensures that your employer knows that you have the tools required for the job, just as you would in the office.

Some scammers take advantage of this by saying that they will send you a check to buy your own equipment, often through a supplier that they specify. And here comes trouble!

The scammer sends you a fraudulent check, money order, or cashier’s check. Many of these are so well done that banks rarely spot they right away. That’s what gives this scam time to work.

You are told to deposit the check and buy equipment from their provider. The catch is that the money from the check may appear before the check is fully cleared, and be found fraudulent later.

In the meantime, you are told to buy your equipment through their provider, paying through Cash App, Zelle, Paypal, or similar. You believe you’ve got the money, so you’re happy to do so.

Then the check fails to clear. You’re out however much they had you spend on the “equipment,” which of course never arrives. The company they told you to buy from isn’t real – and you just sent money to the scammer. Worse, with the app they had you pay through, you most likely have no recourse to get your money back. You’re out hundreds or thousands of dollars.

A Guide To Common Types of Work at Home Scams

Work at home scams go beyond fraudulent job listings. These are some common scams you can learn to recognize without contacting them for more information.

High Priced Training for Business Opportunity

Starting a business isn’t always easy, so it sounds nice when they offer training to help you get started. The problem is that sometimes the training is expensive, not that helpful, and the money people earn from referring others to training may be the main way they earn from that business opportunity.

Check Cashing/Money Orders

Check cashing and money order scams prey on your greed. Sometimes the check or money order arrives unsolicited, with instructions to do a “mystery shop” with it, cashing the check, keeping part, and wiring the rest to the company scammer.

The catch here is that the check or money order is fraudulent, and suddenly you are on the hook for the entire amount. You may even be in legal trouble if there is any indication you knew it was fraudulent.

Don’t let greed beat out common sense. There is no place that it makes sense for someone to send you possibly thousands of dollars as a money order to cash, have you keep a couple hundred and wire the rest back to them. If they really needed to mystery shop a place that way, a much smaller amount would do, and they’d work with a standard mystery shopping company.

If you receive one of these checks or money orders, do not cash it. Take it to your bank or the police and explain your concerns. Sometimes even banks will be fooled for a short time, but if you cash it, you’re liable for it. You don’t need that trouble in your life. It’s much better to give it to the professionals who can use it for evidence against those who tried to fool you.

Typing/Data Entry Scams

Doing data entry from home sounds so easy, and sometimes you’ll see an ad promising great pay for it. The problem is that it’s too easy. Most times I see real data entry jobs, they’re in an office, not at home. After all, if it were already in the computer, they wouldn’t need you to type it in, would they?

If you want to type from home, learn how to do transcription – there are more jobs in that area, although you will be competing with voice recognition software. The software isn’t good enough yet to entirely beat humans out, so there are still jobs out there.

Most often, these opportunities are some sort of ad posting. You don’t have a job; rather, you’re trying to earn affiliate commissions by placing ads on websites. You’ll have to pay to find that part out, of course.

Job Boards With a Fee

Many online job boards, such as the one I run here, are free for job seekers to use. Others charge a fee. There can be very good reasons to pay a fee, but make sure you know what you’re getting into. Some of them don’t give you anything worthwhile. Do your research before paying for any job board. You want to know what their refund policy is in case you aren’t satisfied even if it looked good from the outside.

Reshipping

The reshipping scam has been around for a while. Basically, they tell you that you will receive packages from sellers that need to be repackaged correctly to be shipped elsewhere.

What’s really happening is that they’re paying with stolen credit cards and such. When the fraudulent payments are discovered, it’s your address investigators will come to. That’s not something you want to get mixed up in, as it can mean jail time.

Envelope Stuffing

Here’s a scam that predates the internet. Someone advertises that you can make money stuffing envelopes, just send them a few bucks and they’ll tell you how.

Want to know how? You do the same to the next suckers down the line. No product, just tell people how to advertise this exact same opportunity. It’s not legal.

Email Processing

Email processing is essentially the same as envelope stuffing, just done online. You place ads telling people they can make money online, just buy your system. You send them the instructions on how to do the same thing you’re doing. Just as with envelope stuffing, this is not legal.

At Home Assembly

When you love to do crafts, assembling items at home can sound appealing. 99 times out of 100, it’s a scam. You’d probably be better off taking a chance on starting a business selling things you made yourself than trying to assemble things at home for someone else.

Usually, you’re expected to pay for supplies, then get paid when your work is up to their standards. It won’t happen.

Pyramid Schemes

Pyramid schemes have been around for a long time. They come in many forms, and not all of them involve money directly. Most recently, I saw one that was about sending books to each other – each person would send books to those above, and recruit others to send books to them, who would recruit others, on down the line. It doesn’t matter what is being sent through the pyramid; the point is that pyramid schemes are illegal.

Sometimes these are hard to spot, and you will always see participants claiming that their version is legal. If it’s a pyramid scheme, it isn’t legal.

Job Offer Out of the Blue

Some companies will contact people completely out of the blue with an apparent job offer. This one often goes with a check cashing or money order scam but may be something else as well.

Seriously, unless you have some serious skills for one job or another, companies aren’t likely to seek you out. That’s especially true for jobs such as mystery shopping, where they can find candidates with relative ease because the basic requirements are low. If you aren’t doing the kind of work where companies use headhunters to find new employees, it’s extremely unlikely that a potential employer has picked you out of nowhere. Be wary.

That doesn’t mean you’re immune if you have better skills. It’s easy for scammers to imitate any kind of job offer. Know who you’re really dealing with when you get a job offer so you have a good chance of getting paid.

Medical Coding and Billing

Medical coding and billing is one of those tricky ones. There are legitimate ways to learn medical coding and billing from home – Career Step (aff) is one of them. It’s not cheap to learn from legitimate sources, which can make scams look appealing.

Medical billing scams will claim to offer you training and resources to help you and may give you a list of doctors who might need your services. The problem here is that most doctors and hospitals have their billing and coding done through a service. If you’re highly experienced, you might be able to find clients on your own. But training on your own with poor quality resources? No.

Even if you go through a good quality training program, most times you won’t be able to do medical billing and coding at home until you have a least 2-5 years of experience in an office. It’s not that easy a job, and you’re usually best off learning it with more experienced people around you so you can ask questions.

Turnkey Websites

If a business opportunity comes to your attention claiming to offer you a turnkey website, be very aware of the chances of a scam. It’s very difficult to make money off a turnkey website – they’re competing against other identical sites, and so don’t tend to get natural traffic. Income potential is often greatly exaggerated.

There are times when a company website makes sense. It’s not uncommon for network marketing opportunities to include a website, but you’re sending people to it through your own marketing efforts, which are often more local. If they’ve been at all honest with you, you should know what you can and cannot expect from your company website.

They Don’t Care About Your Qualifications

Any job that doesn’t care about your qualifications is likely to be a scam. Even jobs that don’t need experience want to know if you have had other jobs, if you’ve volunteered, what your education is, and so forth. They want to know what kind of an employee you might be.

You should also expect an interview where they’re very interested in your answers to some challenging questions. Anyone who has worked an entry level job can tell you that they want to talk to you for a while first. The job offer does not come just based on your resume. Employers want to know something about the person they might hire by interacting with them. It may be only a phone call for a home based job, but there should be some kind of serious interview.

Ask Around

When in doubt about any work at home opportunity, ask around about it. Don’t rely on the people you heard about it from, find other people to talk to. This can be as simple as asking a family member what they think or talking to a friend.

You can also discuss the opportunity on a work at home website. Many are good at spotting scams or at least telling you if it looks a little iffy.

Google can be useful, but it won’t always give useful answers. There are people who promote opportunities by targeting the name of the opportunity plus the word “review” or “scam.” It’s not always easy to sort out legitimate reviews from reviews done by people who have a financial stake in it and no problem with lying. I do not mean that all affiliate reviews or sponsored reviews are bad. It’s just that some people aren’t all that concerned with keeping a reputation for honesty and will be positive about anything.

Even though work at home scams are plentiful, there are real jobs and home business opportunities out there for you to consider. Use caution and don’t share your most important personal information until you are certain it’s safe. This includes your social security number and bank account information. Any other information you can protect is good, but those two are the most important.

Know Your Keywords

The right keywords are vital to any job search. “Work at home” is not an ideal keyword. While many legitimate jobs use it, it’s commonly used by scams as well.

I find “remote” to be an often useful keyword, although it can mean something other than a job you can do at home. Some companies use it to mean you won’t be in their main office, but you may be in a smaller one. I’ve also seen it used for jobs where you would be sent to work in another country. Remote indeed!

“Telecommute” and “telework” are also useful. Sometimes these mean that you will work in the office part of the time, but many are fully at home. Freelance can be good if you don’t mind taking on projects rather than getting a regular job with an employer. With any job search keyword, beware of scams, as they can hide anywhere.

Narrow your results down by including the kind of job title you’re looking for or a skill you have. The more specific you are, the better your search results will be. I have far too many people email me asking how to get a work at home job who have no idea what kind of job they want. It’s hard to give advice to someone who hasn’t thought their search through even that much. It also won’t impress a potential employer if you apply to jobs you aren’t remotely qualified for.

If You Get Scammed…

Beware scams targeting people who have just been scammed. Yes, it’s a thing. Scammers are awful.

It’s called a refund and recovery scam. The scammer finds you on a “sucker list” and contacts you with an offer to help you get your money back. For a fee, of course. Alternatively, they’ll ask for your bank information so that they can direct deposit your money. They make themselves sound official and reliable as they make their pitch.

Don’t fall for it.

Any time you think you have been scammed, report it at https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/. You can try your local police as well, but as most scams are done online, it can be difficult for them to do much. The FTC partners with other law enforcement agencies, so reporting to them is your best bet.

The post The Work at Home Job Seeker’s Guide to Scams appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

The biggest problem with working at home is getting started. It’s tough! There are more scams than real opportunities out there, and lots of people get sucked in, not knowing any better. There has to be a way to avoid work at home job scams, right?

Actually, there are several ways.

There’s no way to 100% guarantee you won’t fall for a scam, but many are so obvious that you can avoid them just by paying attention.

1. Ridiculously high pay.

If the pay is amazingly high for the amount of effort, it’s probably a scam. Thousands of dollars a month for easy, part time work – scam!

This is particularly common with the classic check cashing or shipping scams. No one is going to send you a check to mystery shop a place and have you send back the excess. That’s not how it’s done. That check is going to bounce hard, and you’ll be responsible. That part of the money you got to keep won’t compare to what you lose.

2. No resume required.

Real employers want to know about your past work experience. They are not going to hire every person who contacts them. They want the best person for the job, and your resume is a part of how they screen out the people they know they don’t want.

Scammers don’t much care about your resume. They don’t care about your past work experience. They want to suck you in quickly and get your personal information and/or money. Resumes are nothing to scammers.

3. Call for information.

Work at home positions don’t have people for you to call for more information. Real businesses are too busy with their business to deal with that many job seekers. When it’s a work at home job on the line, there will be a lot of people calling if there’s a number available, and employers know it.

Scammers want to talk to you. How else are they going to get you to bite? They want to appeal to your dreams of an easy work at home job with high pay. That’s easier to do with personal contact.

A similar scam is on social media, when the company asks you to pm them for details. This happens a lot in groups for job seekers. Legitimate companies will tell you who they are. A request for a pm is either a scam or an opportunity that for one reason or another can’t be posted publicly. If you do respond to one of these, use caution.

4. Ad says “work at home.”

For the most part, legitimate work at home positions are labeled as “telecommute” or “remote” positions. It’s certainly not a featured part of the ad. Real employers want the best person for the job, not the one who first notices the chance to work at home and then the job requirements.

Scammers know people type things like “work at home” into job boards and search engines. Having that phrase feature prominently in the ad is one way to get your attention.

That said, some legitimate jobs will be listed as “work at home.” Consider this a caution sign, not an absolute dealbreaker.

5. “No Experience Necessary.”

Sure, there are remote jobs out there that don’t require experience. They aren’t that common, however. Working at home is demanding, and employers want to know that you have at least some sort of work experience, preferably in the industry you’re about to start working in. If experience isn’t an absolute necessity, they may call it something more along the lines of “entry level position.”

Scammers, once again, don’t care about your work experience. They count on your desperation to find some sort of work at home.

6. Vague job listing.

One of the great things about the internet is that employers can give details about what they’re looking for in an employee. It’s not like it was when job ads were usually in the newspaper, and space came at a premium.

These days you should expect to see specific skill and/or experience requirements in job ads. Employers don’t want tons of resumes from people who aren’t remotely qualified for the position. They want to hear from people who have as many of the skills listed as possible and a willingness to earn the rest.

Scammers don’t need to give a lot of information. They know the suckers are going to contact them anyway.

7. Pay to show your interest.

Scammers love to talk about how many people are interested in their opportunity. That’s why they need you to send them some money to show that you’re serious about the opportunity. It gets rid of all the people who aren’t serious about this fantastic opportunity you’re going to miss out on if you don’t send in your money.

When was the last time you heard about a company wanting people to pay to apply? Never sounds about right.

8.They want your bank account information.

Some scams will ask for your bank account information, saying they want to direct deposit your pay. Direct deposit is a wonderful thing, you get your money faster, but be careful in sharing your banking information with anyone.

If you want direct deposit for your pay, make absolutely certain the opportunity is legitimate first. You may have to work a while and receive paper paychecks for a time to be certain if the company is not well known. Even if you have researched the company, make sure you’re really dealing with who you think you’re dealing with, as some scams steal the names of legitimate companies to gain your trust.

9. The interview is through Google Hangouts.

I don’t know why it is, but many scam companies like to use Google Hangouts or other messaging apps to conduct “interviews.”

Online interviews are common enough, these days, but Hangouts isn’t where they usually take place. Video interviews or interviews over the phone are more common.

10. They use Gmail or other free email.

Legitimate companies use email addresses set up through their own domains, not Gmail. It’s a great service for individuals, but utterly unprofessional for real businesses.

Scammers, on the other hand, love how easy it is to set up free email addresses. They can often get a free email address with the name of a legitimate company as a part of their email address.

When in doubt, check with the company you think you’re in contact with another way. Go to their website and find a different way to contact them. Companies that hire people who work at home are generally well aware that scammers steal their good names to trick people. They should quickly be able to tell you if you’re really in contact with them.

Knowing how to avoid work at home scams is vital to your work at home job hunt. There are few things as frustrating as falling for a scam. It takes away from the time you could better spend on finding a legitimate work at home job. Do your best to avoid work at home job scams so you don’t waste your time.

The post 10 Rules To Help You Avoid Work At Home Job Scams appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

I’m seeing the secret sister gift exchange all over Facebook right now. I have a few friends who are participating, and it just makes me wince. Simply put, the secret sister gift exchange is a pyramid scheme, and illegal.

A lot of people don’t understand that. $10 seems like such a small risk, and it is. But the odds of receiving the promised 6 or 36 gifts is poor, especially since it depends not only on how well you recruit people into it, but how well your recruits bring people into the deal as well.

How Is The Secret Sister Gift Exchange Supposed To Work?

The basic premise is so simple. You send your gift to the person whose name appears at the top of the list you receive. When you send the list to your 6 recruits, you remove the person you sent a gift to and put the second person’s name at the top. Your name becomes the second name on the list.

There is often a push to do this quickly so that everyone gets their gifts in time for Christmas. Your six people send to the top of the list, and their people, now totaling 36 people, send gifts to you. It sounds wonderful.

Legally, however, this falls under the same laws as chain letters and lotteries. It’s not something you want to mess with. Not many people will get in legal trouble for doing the secret sister gift exchange, but why try your luck? It’s a federal crime, according to the Post Office. It also may be a crime by the laws in your state.

If you have any doubts, check out this notice on Facebook from the USPS. It explains things pretty well.

Do The Math

If you do the math on the secret sister gift exchange, you can quickly see why it will quickly run out, even if everyone finds enough people and everyone sends their gifts. Both of those are pretty iffy themselves.

Six people each finding six people means they need 36 people. Those 36 people need a total of 216 people, who need 1296 people. Keep this going for five more levels, and you need 10,077,696 people. That’s a difficult number, but not completely impossible. Highly unlikely, of course.

It only takes 13 levels to get beyond the entire population of the planet. Even assuming some people participate more than once, it’s not going to happen.

This means it won’t take long at all for people to have trouble finding someone to send gifts. Many people who try to join in won’t get anything in return. Most will simply fail to get a full six people sending gifts, and their people in return will have trouble finding enough people.

You might get a few gifts, but usually, that’s it. Between the number of people needed for everyone to get their gifts and the difficulty in recruiting people, it’s just not going to go that well.

There are also gift exchanges where the focus is on wine. It has the same problem as this one. Just don’t join in. The wine version also presents challenges in shipping it legally.

Talking Friends Out Of The Secret Sister Gift Exchange

It can be hard to call this out as a scam. I’ve seen people call friends names for trying to explain why the secret sister gift exchange doesn’t work or is illegal.

I would imagine that most people have trouble admitting the problems with the gift exchange because they’re already invested in it. They’ve promised to send a gift to someone else, or have even sent it already.

It’s worth a try, even if the friend who posts the gift exchange won’t listen. Someone else might.

Be polite when you try to discourage friends from this. No one will respond well if they feel foolish. You should also remember that the people participating don’t mean to scam or cheat anyone. They’re trying to do something fun. No one in this means any harm by it.

That doesn’t change the legal issues. Or the fact that eventually there are people who won’t get anything in return.

Then there’s the risk in putting your personal information out there for random people. You may know all the people you recruit into the gift exchange, but it’s the people they recruit who will be sending you gifts, and they’ll get your name and address too. Are you comfortable with that?

Alternatives To The Secret Sister Gift Exchange

It may be better to suggest setting up a basic secret Santa gift exchange, where everyone in a group draws a name and buys for one other person. No grand promises of dozens of gifts. Just a simple gift exchange among friends. It’s much simpler and legal when you avoid the chain letter aspects of the secret sister gift exchange. Best of all, you know that everyone gets a gift.

If you want something to feel good about, donate to a local cause. There are lots of wonderful causes out there, and even a $10 donation will be welcome. You won’t get a gift back, but you will have done something good.

As illegal actions go, this is a minor one, and I doubt many people ever get prosecuted for it. But why take the chance when a simpler gift exchange works just fine?

Click for full size

The secret sister gift exchange isn’t the usual kind of scam I write about here, but it’s popular enough I consider it worth a mention. If you’d like to learn more about work at home scams, take a look at the ones I’ve covered on this site.

The post Beware The Secret Sister Gift Exchange appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

Have you ever had a work at home job interview which made you wonder if the job was a scam? That would be a terrible feeling, wouldn’t it? You’ve looked hard for a work at home job, found something you thought was worth applying for, and then boom! You realize that this work at home job interview is a scam, nothing more.

What a waste of time.

The problem is that it’s not always that obvious that they’re setting you up to be scammed. You have to be alert to the signs of a work at home scam anytime you go on a job interview. These scams can start with jobs you’ve found on otherwise legitimate job sites. You always have to be careful in your work at home job hunt.

Here are some of the red flags to consider:

Interview Is For A Job You Never Applied For

If a company contacts you to interview for a job you never applied for, don’t get too excited. It’s all too likely that it’s a scam.

A few legitimate companies will seek out the resumes of qualified people, but more scammers do this. If a company contacts you out of the blue for an interview, do your research before trusting them.

Most often, they will claim to have found your resume on a popular job site. This means the first thing you should consider is if your resume is even on that site.

But even if your resume is there, that’s not enough to trust the person contacting you. If your resume wasn’t on that site, however, you know it’s probably a scam.

They Want Your Personal Information Too Soon

When you’ve been hired by a company, there’s a lot of information you’ll need to share with them. They need your Social Security Number for tax purposes. They need your bank account information to do direct deposit of your pay. This is perfectly reasonable.

A legitimate employer will not, however, need this information right at the start of the interview process. They will need to confirm at some point that you are qualified to work for them, and that may include knowing where you live and that you’re a legal resident, but that only matters if they’re going to hire you.

Share your personal information only if you’re confident that the job is legitimate. Otherwise, you’re putting yourself at risk of identity theft.

They Ask For Money

There are very few exceptions to the rule that if a job asks you for money, it’s a scam. You should never have to pay to show interest in a job. But sometimes scammers are tricky. They can make it sound reasonable.

The challenge is that some legitimate employers have potential employees pay for a background check. This even happens with some outside the home jobs; it’s not restricted to work at home employers.

If a potential employer wants you to pay for a background check, get information on who will be doing the check and whether you will be paying the employer or the background check company. You can then do some research to find out if this is truly a normal practice for that company or if someone is pretending to be them.

A few other companies will hire you as a freelancer and you may have to pay for certain kinds of training. This should also be viewed with caution until you know that the offer is legitimate.

I have never seen any other legitimate reason for an employer to ask a potential employee for money. Businesses should make money from their clients or the products and services they sell, not from potential employees.

Legitimate companies will not ask you to give them money for the equipment to do your job. You don’t need to buy software from them. Legitimate employers will either provide these things to you or expect you to have them already.

They Want To Send You Money To Buy Equipment

Some legitimate work at home opportunities will give you the equipment you need to do your job. Some will give you a budget with which to buy your own equipment.

If they say they’re sending you a check or money order for this, be careful. It could be one of the classic scams.

In this scam, they’ll tell you to cash the check, use part for your needs, and send the extra back. The problem is that the check is not legitimate, and you will be on the hook for the entire amount of the check.

They may even tell you that the money is to be sent to someone in particular, who will then send you the equipment you need. If you stop to think about this, you’ll know that it makes no sense. If they have a company they regularly buy from, they could pay that company directly and have the equipment shipped to you.

Interview Is Done Entirely Online

It’s not uncommon for parts of a work at home job interview to be done online. It’s certainly more practical than trying to do interviews in person.

The most alarming is if they want to interview you only by email, Google Hangouts, or on a messaging app of any sort. Your typical employer wants to actually talk to potential employees, as that gives them a better idea as to how you present yourself.

Skype is sometimes used for job interviews, as are similar apps that allow you to talk to each other, rather than using only text or email.

If you cannot find a way to confirm that the person who is interviewing you is connected to the company, be careful.

Email addresses are an easy way to connect someone to a company. They should belong to the domain owned by the company you’re interviewing with. A Gmail address or other free address is far more likely to be a scam. An email address that is similar to, but not identical to the company’s domain should also be viewed with caution, although some companies have multiple domains.

They Don’t Care About Your Qualifications

Any legitimate employer is going to care that you’re qualified for the job. In an interview, they’ll want to know more about your qualifications and experience than what they saw in your resume. They will ask you questions to draw out the details that are important to them.

Someone who is running a scam wants to lure you in as fast as possible, so they can move on to the next victim.

On a related note, they may also be vague about the details of what you’ll be doing in the job. That’s because they’re either more interested in stealing your personal information or because they know you’ll catch on if they tell you too much too soon.

They Offer You The Job Almost Immediately

Very few jobs hire people during the first interview. Most employers go through a lot of interviews with applicants to find just the right employee for the job. Even if you have an excellent interview, employers usually have to review how all the interviews for that position went, and possibly conduct more rounds of interviews before deciding who to hire. This can take weeks or even months.

A scammer knows that they need to land you quickly or you’ll have more time to realize that it’s not legitimate. They also count on your need to earn money and desire to do so quickly and easily. If you’re so eager to find a way to work at home, you’re an easy target.

The Name Of The Company Isn’t Clear

While some scams will claim to be from legitimate companies, others won’t make it clear if they have a company name at all. Often enough, this is done by someone claiming that they are recruiting for another company. They’ll tell you that it’s so you don’t go to the company directly and that the recruiter wants to be paid for finding you.

It has more to do with the fact that if you contact the company, you’ll find out that there is no job.

If you have any doubt about the legitimacy of a job, get as much information as you can about the company and the person you’re talking to. You can look them up on sites such as LinkedIn, and see if the information given matches up.

What Do You Do Next?

There are few things as frustrating as finding out that your work at home job interview is a scam. Your time has just been wasted. It’s a bump in the road of your work at home job hunt. You can’t help but worry about whatever information you shared in that interview.

But you may not be completely helpless. There are things you can do.

If you believe the job opportunity was a scam, you should consider reporting it. The services they used to contact you may be very interested in this information. They don’t want people pulling scams through their services, as it gives them a bad name too.

If the scammer was using the name of a legitimate company, you can contact them as well. They can’t do much to stop the scam, but they’re usually very interested in knowing. This is why some companies have a scam warning on their job pages.

Reporting a scam as best you can is how you can help slow them down. You won’t stop a determined scammer, and arrests are rare due to the difficulty of catching them, but you can make things a little more difficult for them. That’s not a bad thing at all.

The post How Do You Know When Your Work At Home Job Interview Is A Scam? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

The hardest part of looking for a way to work from home is to dodge all the scams. Today I decided to let you have a little fun while doing so. I’ve set up a work at home scam bingo card for you to play with.

As you go through the various opportunities, see how many spaces you fill up, just as with regular bingo. Not every job that has one of these symptoms will be a scam, but they’re definitely at a higher risk.

How do you win work at home scam bingo? By avoiding scams, of course!

Sadly, there are many more ways I could have filled these squares. But it’s not a bad way to get started.

More Tips To Avoid Work At Home Scams

Knowing the obvious signs of a work at home scam is the first step in avoiding them. It allows you to rule out a lot of things with relatively little effort. I’ve written a post with more details, The Work at Home Job Seeker’s Guide to Scams, which can help you learn more about many of the common work at home scams.

New work at home scams appear regularly. Some are new twists on old scams, while others are so tricky that they’re hard to spot.

Some email scams, for example, so closely mirror what you would expect to see in a legitimate offer that you might miss that the domain linked is entirely wrong. Gmail is pretty good at filtering these out, but some still sneak through, and other email providers may not filter them either.

I’ve shared some of the scam emails I’ve received through the years. If you have Gmail or another email provider that lets you look through your spam emails, you might find some amusing scams in there too. Be very careful of any links in these emails, even if it sounds good to you. They were filtered for a reason!

I like to have a bit of a sense of humor about scams. It’s frustrating that so many people lose money to them, but making a game of it, such as work at home scam bingo, makes finding them a lot more fun.

The post Work at Home Scam Bingo appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

I get to start this year off with a lovely new scam email I received. It’s pretty simple. It says I have been made a moderator of a YouTube channel. On mine, the channel is called “Have Win Apple iPhone X Get It From: – (link)” – isn’t that a lovely name??? I wasn’t the least bit surprised to find that it was a YouTube Moderator scam email.

Here’s a screenshot of the email:

Yes, it really does seem that it comes from YouTube. These guys are starting a fake YouTube channel just so they can make people moderators of their channel and try to scam them.

The link in the channel name is the key to this scam. It shows up as a link in the email. When I checked things out in the Google Product Forums, some people had followed it and had even filled out the requested information. Don’t do that, folks. You should know better. Never share your information on sites you don’t trust.

There does not seem to be a way to keep people from making you a moderator on YouTube as of this writing. With this scam going around, I expect that Google/YouTube will be looking at things to find a way to control this scam.

One simple thing they could do is disallow domain names as usernames or in channel names. I don’t know that they would want to do that, however, as I’m sure many legitimate websites name their channels for their domain.

Better might be to say that you can only be made a moderator of a channel you already follow. This seems like a very simple thing to require to show that a potential moderator has already interacted with the channel in some way.

What To Do About The YouTube Moderator Scam Email

First of all, make sure you know the email is a legit one from YouTube before clicking any links in the email. I looked at this one very, very carefully before I reported it as spam and checked to see if the channel was still open so that I could report it. You don’t want to be tricked into logging in at a fake site. You also don’t want your name as moderator on a scam channel, even when it’s likely one of many, and utterly meaningless.

If you get this email, don’t overreact. I saw some people on the Google Product Forums who shut down their YouTube channels over this. I think that’s a huge overreaction. There is no indication that your channel has been compromised just because you got this email.

This scam email is really not a big deal. Hit the “report as spam” link in the email if you like, and go on with your life. YouTube wants to know about these channels quickly so that they can shut them down. They don’t like scams either. You can also go to the channel and flag it as spam if it hasn’t already been deactivated. The YouTube channel in mine had been shut down for violating the TOS. Surprise, surprise.

It amazes me that scams like this can work, but as I saw on the Google Product Forums, they apparently do, even on people who know enough to go to the product forums. Some ways that amazes me, but that’s just reality.

Be careful any time you get an email. Don’t trust it just because it comes from a trusted source. This one really did come through YouTube’s system because they found a way to get their fraudulent link in there. But it could just as easily been a phishing email from start to finish. Pay close attention to where a link really goes before you click one in an email… or anywhere.

The post YouTube Moderator Scam Email appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

Once in a while I like to check out the spam box of my email account. Not only does this allow me to catch the false positives in there, some of the scams are educational to see. Most are pretty obvious when you look at them carefully, but they fool enough people that the scammers keep trying.

Not all of these are work at home scams. They’re just the ones I found interesting enough to share here. I’m going to ignore all the sex and dating ones. There are just too many. Be ready for lots of screen shots.

Amazon Order Scam

Where, oh where to start with this one?

We have the misspelled “Responde.” I can hardly even type it that way.

Next is the pathetic lack of trying on the “Amazon.com” that looks nothing like the logo. They weren’t even trying there. All in all, I’d call that a good thing. Makes them easier to spot.

Then there’s request to confirm the order. By email. Yes, hovering over that link indicates that it will start an email.

Less obvious, perhaps, is that the email is sent to an address starting with “ctedh2i.” I assume the sender used bcc and had to have something in the to: section, because I don’t have any email addresses like that.

Fake ATM Card

I have to admit to some curiosity on this. Just how does an ATM card “in cure demurrage” anyhow? What does that even mean??

It amazes me every time that I see it that this scam is still going around. Sure, they’ve change it some – it’s not a mysterious inheritance or some rich guy just deciding to give you money to avoid the government getting it. This time it’s a CORPORATE ATM CARD ALL IN BOLD from some African bank.

And then there’s poor DHL waiting to get a confirmation on your address. And you can see the pending scam so easily with the need for a Tax/Stamp Duty to be procured before shipment.

Alas, it will be a long wait for them because I’m not replying. I hope no one else does.

As a side note, I still get the standard mysterious person wanting to send me tons of money scam too. Often. Some even claim to be passed through the FBI.

Amazon Secret Shopper Employment

Here’s a long one. They’re trying hard to look real.

I love that Gmail not only put this in the spam file, but warns that this email fails Amazon.com’s required tests for authenticity. Good job all around. The email is painful to read, with the random new paragraphs, usually in mid sentence. I think I can tell how long a line their text editor had, because it’s pretty consistent.

This is an example of the standard secret shopper scam, which is still going strong. This one is quite blatant about saying you will get a money order for more than you need. For those who haven’t heard of it, the money order is fake, but they’ll have you cash the whole thing and send all but your “pay” back to them. Banks and stores are getting better at spotting the fake money orders, but some still get through, and it’s the person who cashed it who is liable. The $800-4500 this email quotes would be painful to pay back, wouldn’t it?

They’re trying hard to push the legitimacy button by claiming membership in the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA) and naming their supposed business. There really is a company called “Secret Shopper” and they are listed on the MSPA website, but this is not from them.

Nor is it from Amazon or Western Union. I’m quite certain cares very little about lapses in Western Union services. It’s not their problem. I’m somewhat amused that they want shoppers to find their nearest Amazon and Western Union outlet – I’ve been to the Amazon store in San Diego, and I don’t think they do that. I suppose it’s possible that an Amazon Locker location might also have Western Union services, but I don’t think it’s that common. But, the scammers promise you can spend $100 in the Amazon section, so I somehow think they’re trying for the stores.

Company Rep Scam

Finally something short and, well, not sweet, but at least it’s short.

Trust the red section from Gmail on the top. It’s a scam. They’ll steal your information, and if they get you to do anything else, it will be fake check or money orders, or forwarding packages bought with stolen credit cards. Either way, it’s bad news.

The post Spam And Scams From My Inbox appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

One of the scams I’ve seen here and there for years is the check cashing scam. It’s still around, but now the FBI says it’s targeting college students. That makes now a good time to review that scam so that you won’t fall for it and you might be able to help others avoid it as well.

The scam is pretty simple. You answer a job ad, and your supposed employer sends you counterfeit checks. You deposit it in your account, keep part and send the balance back to someone as a wire transfer. In this particular version, they may claim you’re sending the money to a vendor to buy equipment or other supplies for the job. You won’t know that the check is bad until it’s too late.

When you look at it, the scam ought to be easy to spot. This doesn’t keep people from falling for it, of course. Legitimate employers do not send you payment before you’ve even started to work, for starters. They also don’t generally send you a check and tell you to go through their vendor to buy the supplies you need for the job. You certainly don’t normally wire money to a vendor to pay them.

A legitimate employer will either expect you to buy what you need on your own or send the equipment and supplies to you themselves. I occasionally see job listings that say you will be allowed a certain amount of money to buy equipment, but that’s not likely to be mixed in with your regular pay… especially when you haven’t actually started yet.

This kind of scam can make your life very difficult for a time. Your bank account could be closed due to the fraudulent activity. You will have to pay bank back for all the money. You may have shared personal information that will make it easier for your identity to be stolen.

Scams like this are why you should always be careful when applying for work. That means here on this website, on your college job board, or any other job board. If something sounds wrong, check into it more carefully before sending in your personal information. You’ll save yourself a lot of heartbreak and financial trouble by avoiding work at home scams.

As a general rule, if you see a job opportunity of any sort, but something seems off about it, be careful. Scammers are often not native English speakers, and this may show in the job ad. Misspellings, strange capitalizations and poor grammar are clues that something might be wrong. Too much money for too little work is another clue.

If you are scammed online, you can report it to the FBI at https://www.ic3.gov/. You can also report it to the police. Local police may be limited in what they can do about an online crime, but it can be helpful for them to know what’s going around.

The post The Check Cashing Scam Is Still Around appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.