Job Seekers, Look Out for Job Scams

The economic downturn is already a devastating blow to job seekers everywhere. Now scammers are taking advantage of the situation by ramping up their methods of swindling people.

Job scamming is a threat to job seekers all over the world. For example, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) reported an increase in job scam complaints in the United States and Canada in the past several years. Singapore job seekers lost $660 million SGD ($495 million USD) in 2022 alone. And in the UK, 10,000 people were approached on LinkedIn and Facebook by “foreign spies and malicious actors” to steal information.

Phishing attacks and malware are the primary methods of scamming job seekers, according to a February Trellix report. Scammers create fake websites, often employing typosquatting. A fake site uses a real name like Indeed that’s slightly misspelled (such as “Indeeed”) or extends the URL in hopes the job seeker will not notice the base domain name. These sites appear legitimate but are used to steal passwords and financial information.