With the coronavirus pandemic shuttering in-person operations and temporarily forcing many Americans to work from home, you might find yourself on the hunt for a remote job opportunity. Jobs that allow you to work from home tend to offer flexible working hours and steady income – yet, scammers, who are looking to take advantage of unsuspecting people, can also manipulate these types of job listings and offerings.
As always, you should trust your instincts when corresponding with someone about a remote job opportunity. You should also look out for any of these signs, which could indicate that your remote job offer is a scam.
The job offer and other correspondence contains spelling and grammar errors.
We’re only human, and grammatical errors are bound to happen. But, if your job offer or any other professional correspondence contains an abundance of mistyped words or poor sentence structure, be wary – you might be dealing with a con artist working too quickly to catch these errors. This is particularly true if the company name, address, or other critical info is misspelled or incorrect.
The email address of your interviewer is strange or off-putting.
Another thing to look at when corresponding via email is the address from which your email came. Unless you are applying for work in another country, no email address should contain international domains, like “.ru” (a top-level domain in Russia). You should also proceed with caution if the job offer is coming from a non-business address – say, a Gmail or Yahoo! address, not a business-oriented one.
You’re constantly being asked to open file attachments.
Did you know that email attachments are a common way for scammers to send malware to your computer or other device? Once opened, this malware can steal passwords, install a virus, or otherwise obtain sensitive personal and/or financial data. If you’re receiving emails pressuring you to open an attachment, or your job offer is hidden within an attachment, you might be dealing with a scammer.
You can’t locate legitimate information about the company on the Internet.
Finally, if an Internet search doesn’t turn up any results about the company who sent you the job offer or interview request, this is a red flag. Any company soliciting employment should have a legitimate website and/or a presence on social media sites, like Facebook or LinkedIn. You can also search the Better Business Bureau’s records. Still no luck? Pass on this fraudulent job offer before it’s too late!
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