What are Job Scams??
Cybercriminals attempt job scams by presenting themselves as authorized Employers or employment agencies to convince victims to provide their personally identifiable information (PII) or to send money. Criminals target job applicants by posting fake job listings on job websites like monster.com or creating their own spoof websites and believing victims that they have potential jobs.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warning states-
“Since early 2019, victims have reported numerous examples of this scam to the FBI. The average reported loss was nearly $3,000 per victim, in addition to damage to the victims’ credit scores.”
Measures of Job Scams:
Cybercriminals will pose themselves as legitimate employers and execute the request with the same information, which is difficult to identify a job scam. Some signs of Job Scams may-
- The job will be posted on the Job boards like monster.com but not on the companies’ websites.
- Cybercriminals or Fake employers can contact victims through non-company email domains.
- Interviews can be conducted through a secure video call, not in-person
- Interviews will victims for a fee to get a job.
- Fake recruiters do not have profiles on the job boards.
- Potential employers can ask for personal information like credit card information before the interviews.
Do’s and Don’ts:
To protect yourself from Job Scams, some do’s and don’ts may include:
- Never provide bank account related information like credit card details to any employers without verifying their identity.
- If someone asked for the money transaction for a job, don’t send it.
- Never share your Social Security number or other PII with someone who does not need to know.
- Do the research on the hiring company. If there are multiple websites for the same company’s name then that may be a fraudulent job.
- Authorized companies will ask for PII during the hiring process. So try to share the information in-person, if in-person contact is not possible then confirm and verify the identity of the potential employer.
- Make sure the website is secure by looking at the address bar, before entering PII online. A decision should not be taken solely upon “https://” or “http://” as criminals can also use https:// to give victims false signals of security.
If you are a victim of Job Scam, following the actions recommended by the FBI:
- Report any suspicious job employer of job scam to the Internet Crime Complaint at ic3.gov or near the FBI office which can be found online at www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices.
- Report the spoof websites on which the fraudulent job postings are listed.
- Upon finding any fraudulent activity, ask immediately your financial institution to cancel or reverse the transactions.
- If you’ve been the victim of a job scam, report it to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) https://www.ftc.gov/complaint.
Contacting LIFARS is Your Next (First?) Step for Handling Cyber Incidents.