5 Signs of a Work From Home Scam – Guest Blog Post

Today’s guest blog post comes from Career Life Connection community member Rose Jensen. And it couldn’t be more timely. I was just asked about work-from-home scans in a recent radio interview and nearly fell for one sent to me on Twitter. I get sent info on workplace flexibility often, so when I received a link about Google allowing workers to work from home I was intrigued. The article was in a legitimate publication in Canada. I read it through cursorily and sent it out to my network. Then I clicked around a bit more…and in order to “work from home” you needed to send in $2.95. Now I understand that’s not a lot…but there is no company who is willing to “hire” you that would make you pay to be hired…none! Fortunately I caught it quickly, outed the person who sent it to me, and called it out for being a scam…Thank you, Rose for your timely thoughts:

Work from home opportunities can be great for those seeking a flexible yet rewarding job. In fact, work from home employees may be more likely to stay and dedicate themselves to a company than those who commute to work. Outrigger Hotels shifted all of its contact agents from its Denver-based office to a work-at-home set up, which reduced tardiness and reduced agent turnover by 35 percent. But some fake businesses are taking advantage of those seeking job flexibility. The recent bust of the Google Money Tree scam comes to mind, where a fake company using Google’s name conned individuals into divulging their credit card numbers. To avoid falling for a similar trap, look out for these 5 tell-tale signs of a work-from-home scam.

1. Do not trust in the legitimacy of a job advertisement just because you saw it on a trusted website. Big news websites, like CNN and your local paper, as well as little ones, like your favorite blog, do not control what advertisements show up on their pages. Instead, they rely on third-party ad placement companies, which often do not screen their ads either. This means that it is possible for bogus advertisements to show up anywhere.

2. Any opportunity you receive via email is a scam. No company or individual with the key to an easy money-making scheme will contact complete strangers to share the information.

3. If you must pay before you can make money, don’t fall for it. No employer will require an employee to pay for anything before receiving a paycheck. After all, if there are expenses to cover, such as training kits, then a credible employer will simply take it out of your first paycheck. Never pay before you get paid.

4. Don’t trust in the use of big names or logos for proof of legitimacy. Just as many organizations have no control over what ads are placed on their sites, they are equally unaware if a fake company uses their logo for a scam. Many fake work-at-home scams use the logos and names of legitimate corporations, claiming that it had been “featured on ABC” or some other source, to try to trick individuals into trusting them.

5. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. This is the bottom line for most work-at-home opportunities. Be logical in deciding if something is real or not. Any “get rich quick” promise should be met with skepticism. After all, if it were so easy to make thousands of dollars just for inputting data or posting links, then why are there not more new millionaires on the block?

This post was contributed by Rose Jensen, who writes about the online universities. She welcomes your feedback at Rose.Jensen28@yahoo.com