Beware of Work From Home Jobs

With the unemployment rate being so high, many are in desperate situations to get a job, any type of job. One option that lots of people look into is getting one of those work from home jobs. There are certainly legitimate work at home jobs that are available but before you apply for anything, you need to be aware of the many work at home scams that are out there.

Before I get into that, if you’re looking for legitimate work from home jobs with no startup fee, here’s what I recommend…

Let’s get started.

You would think that most people already know about email scams and that you should never bother responding to those advertisements. However, many people aren’t aware of scams that are coming from actual job sites such as Monsters.com, Yahoo Jobs, and Career Builder. Many people see these job sites as legit so any job offers from these sites must also be legit. This isn’t the case at all. Normally, the victims of these scams wouldn’t have fallen for these tricks but when money is short and the urgency to make some money is high, people tend to take chances that they wouldn’t have otherwise.

Here are some things to look out for when looking into any type of work form home jobs. Some of these things are obvious but scammers are constantly trying to find better ways to trick people out of their hard earned money.

1. Check their email address. Legit companies will always use their company email address. If you ever get some sort of work at home job offer by someone using a free email address such as Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail, then chances are, it’s a scam. Scammers will straight up tell people they are a hiring manager from some well-known company and even use the company’s logo in their email. Don’t fall for it. Remember to look at the address after the @ symbol of the email. BestBuy@gmail is a sign of a scam compared to hr@bestbuy.com. Of course, it’s possible that they could buy some random domain name to make their email look more legit. What you can do is check to see if their site is even indexed by searching for site:url in Google where url is their website.

For example, I just got an email from some scammer claiming that I can make thousands of dollars with little work. The email was from @iwillmakeitthere.com. I did a search for site:iwillmakeitthere.com and nothing came up meaning it’s not indexed which tells me that it’s safe to assume that the person or program who sent me the email just created this site recently or is a low life scumbag trying the scam people. Oh well, karma is a bitch folks. If you scam people, you’ll get screwed one way or another eventually.

2. Wire transfers are scams. Any company asking you to be some middle person who wires money into your bank account is a scam. This is the money mule scam. You can find a lot of these on places like Craigslist from babysitting jobs to transfer agent jobs. Just turn down any offer that involves you having to do anything with your bank account. Craigslist even has a note saying “Beware any deal involving Western Union, Moneygram, wire transfer, cashier check, money order…” and yet people still fall for these things.

3. Fake news sites are scams. You have probably seen these ads online by way of pop ups. There are literally thousands of these fake news sites that try to look legit. Names like New York Local News with “As seen on CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN” are all scams. They basically trick people into thinking that their work online opportunity is legit by using logos of well known news outlets as well as companies like Google.

This scam normally involves you having to buy some product and then them automatically charging you each and every month and making it difficult for you to cancel. If you read the bottom of these websites, you will find that stories “may be factitious” and testimonials are “remunerated” which just means they paid people to say what they said. Many of these sites are being cracked down but as soon as one goes down, another one pops up.

Many of them use your IP address to “customize” the heading to make it look like the news is from your local city. They all have similar layouts with some unlisted Youtube video about some fake story, fake comments praising the program, and every link on the page leading to the same URL. Many of them use this French news anchor’s picture probably for her attractiveness I guess.

4. A real job doesn’t require you to pay any money, no matter what the amount is. When was the last time you worked for a company where you were a salaried employee and had to pay to get started? That’s right, never. If a company needs to you pay for something, they should be willing to just minus it from your paycheck.

5. Be careful of work from home job openings stating things like “No experience necessary” and “Make $XXXX a month”. If the pay was really that good, unless if it’s straight sales, there will ALWAYS be some experience needed.

6. Use common sense. Don’t let your desperation for money blind your judgment. If you have any feeling that you might be in a middle of a scam, take a step back and reevaluate the situation. Ask friends and family for their opinion.

7. Do your research. If the job is a scam, chances are, you aren’t the first victim and because of that, you should be able to find tons of complaints online about the company or person.

So where do you find legit work from home jobs for moms or students or anyone looking for some extra cash? Since I’ve never actually looked for one, I wouldn’t be able to tell you but I do hire people from sites like Odesk and Elance which are definitely legit ways to make money from home. You probably won’t be making thousands of dollars a week like many of these scams will claim you can make, but at least you will actually make money.

If you search online a lot and want to earn virtual money that can be traded in for stuff like gift cards from Amazon for free, then read my Swagbucks Review.

Here is a short video about online job scams.

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