According to the Federal Trade Commission data, the job scams have almost three times since the introduction of Kovid -19 epidemic.
In the first nine months of 2023 alone, FTC made around 61,000 complaints, which cost the victims more than $ 186 million.
Francisco Tobin, a career expert from LinkedIn, said, “We know that many job seekers are in the market for new opportunities.” “We have also seen fraud activity, increase in fake accounts.”
In today’s digital age, the Internet provides an endless amount of job prospects, but not all they seem that they seem. Scammers are hunting on those who need to find work.
“Some of them are desperate,” Tobin said. “Some of them are constantly watching. And they are [overlooking] Some signs of warning, some red flags. ,
LinkedIn, one of the world’s largest professional networks, is a great place to start a job search. But scammers are in the mixture, form fake accounts, offer fake jobs and present as job recruitments.
According to the latest transparency report of LinkedIn, its automatic rescue blocked 90% of the fake accounts created in the first six months of the previous year. Overall, 99.7 % of fake accounts were stopped before reporting by a user.
Criminals can post government agencies, employees of legitimate organizations or post a fake job listing. They can steal your bank account information or identity.
Tobin said, “Our manual team of human experts who work around the clock, to be able to identify these different types of trends, a variety of scams, a variety of techniques, who are using these bad actors, to avail the victims, to take advantage of the victims,” Tobin said.
To fight identity theft and fake job posting, LinkedIn launched a free verification service of last year April for the use of users and companies. By October, more than 18 million profiles were verified. This service is available to most users and companies. This job can also verify posting – it means that there is information about the company that has been confirmed by LinkedIn or is information about the job poster confirmed by LinkedIn.
Tobin said that red flag users should look out.
“If someone asks you for money with the bat … then anyone who tries to take the conversation on another platform … gives that sound very good to come true … or if you just do an interview, and suddenly, you got a job,” Tobin explained.
FTC also warns consumers to be suspicious if you are offered a job without interview. And if you get a check before starting a job and use money to buy supply, it can be a scam.