OSF - 2.22 - scams - recruitment
Recruitment scams typically come either via email or through social media sites. Social media sites, particularly those directed at either career planning, professional development, or building your network of connections, can provide the scammers with a fertile recruiting ground. Typically those on these sites are eager to divulge their skills and interests, and this allows scammers the ability to target the supposed job specifically to the victim they want to approach.
Recruitment scams are aimed at the unemployed or underemployed and are taking advantage of the vulnerability of this population to any offer of employment. As with any scam, there are going to be some variations in the approaches here. For example, an advanced be fraud may initially be making an appeal strictly to greed. However, over time, a number of scammers moved away from the greed motivation, and augmented it with appeals to conscience or the desire to help. Those particular forms of advanced fee scam stress either the pitiable nature of the illness that the scammer is supposedly suffering from, towards the end of their life, or the appeal to assist in creating a charity, and improve the lives of others.
Recruitment scams come in a wide variety of forms. Sometimes it is a specific offer of a particular job. In this case, the scam may be aimed at the potential employee. In some cases, the scam is simply a phishing scam, where the scammers are trying to pick up personal information, and possibly banking or credit card information, from the supposed potential employee. In other cases, the scammers are trying to sell, or upsell, the potential employee on training courses, certification facilities, resume services, or other services or products that may be presented as enhancing the potential employee's ability to find work.
Specific offers of specific jobs are sometimes targeted at existing employees of an existing company. In this case, the scam is also a phishing scam, but is primarily aimed at obtaining information about the company at which the individual is currently employed. Obtaining information about wages, terms of service, job satisfaction, and so forth can be used in industrial information gathering.
Sometimes the recruitment scam is more generic. A fairly vague offer of work may open the door to different kinds of scams. Sometimes the jobs are actual jobs, but very often these result in offers of gig economy type jobs. The gig economy jobs, very often based on completed submitted work, may initially seem attractive, but once specific requirements are factored in, the hourly wage may be ridiculously low.
In addition, with regard to gig economy work, potential candidates should always realize that the payment may be contingent upon acceptable work, with the employer being the sole arbiter of what work is acceptable. In this case, workers may find that they are doing an awful lot of work which is being supposedly rejected by the employer, but is actually being used for postings on social media and other types of situations. This type of work is probably being reduced by the use of artificial intelligence to create slop for social media sites, and so the likelihood of encountering this particular type of recruitment scam is somewhat decreasing.
As noted, recruitment scams may be simply phishing scam approaches. Sometimes it is not bank account or financial information that the scammers are concerned about, as much as obtaining information about the candidate. People will be less cautious about providing details in a job interview situation, or what seems to be a job interview situation. Normal job interviews do not, of course, delve into deeply personal matters: in many jurisdictions, this is forbidden by law. However, very few people faced with a job interview situation will be too terribly concerned about the niceties involved with whether or not the interviewer is allowed to ask you that particular question, particularly if the interview seems to be a friendly one and the questions are being submitted in what seems to be an informal chit-chat part of the interview. This obtaining of personal information can be passed along to scammers of other types, who will then have the ability to target this particular individual for more specific types of scams as their situation indicates a vulnerability to a specific approach.
Sometimes it is different difficult to make a distinction between a recruitment scam, and the simple fact of an over eager recruiter, who has a job that isn't very good, and simply wants to use a shotgun approach to get absolutely anyone to take the work. On the basis that I am an expert in a few different technical fields, and I'm a published author, I am subject to frequent approaches from supposed "publishers" who are, in fact, simply looking for writers-for-hire to turn out the latest hack job on the latest technical topic of interest.
An obvious protection against the recruitment scams is simply to contact the company for which you are supposed to be working, and find out whether they are, in fact, hiring that position. However, sometimes the scammers try to circumvent this in a variety of ways. For example, sometimes the job is a supposed contract job which, when the particular contract is completed, may lead to further appointment with the parent company. Sometimes the project to be undertaken is a secret project, and is supposedly not widely known even among the employees of the company that is purportedly to hire you. There are a variety of approaches that can be taken in order to prevent you from simply contacting the company, and particularly the human resources department, to find out whether or not anybody knows who you are, or is it aware of the position you are being offered.
Online scams, frauds, and other attacks (OSF series postings)
Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/02/online-scams-frauds-and-other-attacks.html
No comments:
Post a Comment