6 ms·

While the article is about companies who post job options that aren't actively being hired, there's another worse issue going on with actually 100% fake job lis

While the article is about companies who post job options that aren't actively being hired, there's another worse issue going on with actually 100% fake job listings. Right now, there is a big issue with fraudsters pretending to be real companies and posting fake job listings in their names with fake contact info. Some job boards make this way easier than it should be. The "employee" responds and even goes through "interviews" with a fraudster, only to be asked for banking information or ask to pay fees or something like that. Then the fraudster disappears, leaving the "employee" thinking that the real company cheated them. The real company wasn't involved at all. Be careful out there if you are looking for a job. This is a very common scam right now. Verify contact information with the actual website of the company, not from a job posting.

lnxg33k1 3y ago
There is also another kind, job postings that then send you coupons to use some company service, i got few times like, oh thanks for applying to company distrupting travel, while you wait here a coupon to use our services
Our_Benefactors 3y ago
Also be aware that any job that asks you to pay them as a condition of employment is a scam. This doesn’t apply just to the scenario above but also MLM schemes for example.
xerox13ster 3y ago
Maybe I'm an exceptionally paranoid person (high probability) but I would never ever ever send payment or my payment info if I am looking for a job. I will input that into a HRM application like Workday or ADP, but no salary could convince me to give up that information directly before I've signed legal paperwork like a contract or tax documents. What I'm far more concerned about with totally fake job listings are the foreign placement agencies that harvest data from resumes and interview native citizens to get information and terminology to prop up their foreign candidate's resume's over the native candidates. The placement agency makes their candidates look far better based on the information mined from the resumes and interviews, they learn how to speak about technology they don't fully understand. The employee gets a placement, the Business gets a cheap H1B indentured worker, and the Agency gets a fatter commission for selling a "more qualified" candidate.
- saulpw 3y ago
  > Maybe I'm an exceptionally paranoid person (high probability) but I would never ever ever send payment or my payment info if I am looking for a job. Sure, we all get wiser as we get older. Would you have known this when you were 22?
  - xerox13ster 3y ago
    Yes, it would never have made sense to me to pay money to someone to earn money. I was 18/19, and had stupidly dropped out of a college I hated for a relationship and found a job posting in the paper for a "warehouse job". I called, they said come in for an interview. I was ecstatic, what a win! My girlfriend drove me there, and it was a door-to-door steak sales job. They told me all the usual you can make so much money doing this, you work your way up and make connections and grow your area. They told me at the end when I was almost into it that I would have to buy the steaks from them and pay myself off the difference. I looked at the dumbasses around me buying it with fresh eyes and saw that they were people VERY MUCH not in good places in life and got up and walked out. 2 years of bullshit jobs later, I found my way back to the tech career I went to college for, but in support not development bc degree issues.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      "This is not a job--it's a business opportunity, and like all business opportunities, it requires a meaningful up-front investment from you. This investment buys you access to the tools you need to [...]" - Fraudster I can see trusting or impressionable 18-19 year olds falling for this, especially if this is their first interviewing experience and job offer--they might think it's normal.
- throwup238 3y ago
  You’re not exceptionally paranoid. The only time I ever reveal bank information is after signing an employment agreement and it’s always on the direct deposit authorization provided by ADP/Gusto/w.e HR software they use, never to a company representative. I’m seeing more and more applications ask for DEI information like sexual orientation and gender identification too - information that I consider almost as private. I can’t believe anyone fills them out sight unseen. But as the sibling comment says, wisdom comes with age (mistakes)
shams93 3y ago
Yeah I ran into this, people are fishing for social security numbers for fraud, if the salary is too good to be true its a good sign its a fraud post.
- toss1 3y ago
  especially if they are posting that salary — an awful lot of companies like to keep salaries secret and (illegally) discourage discussion. Posting a salary for Position XYZ which is higher than current employees doing XYZ is a good way to generate discontent. But dangling a fat juicy carrot to lure suckers into a fraud? ...
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
> there's another worse issue going on with actually 100% fake job listings. We've made coding, automation, content creation, and publishing so easy by now that the balance of capability has been tipped to low ability bad actors. And they're gaining the power to make the internet just unusable.
- aerhardt 3y ago
  Point taken but the job platforms must be doing a terrible job with countermeasures. I don’t think in many cases these countermeasures need to be that advanced, it doesn’t sound particularly hard for a job posting website to verify that someone works at Ford or whatever.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    >that someone works at Ford or whatever. Quite often when you're getting a job at Ford or whatever, you're not actually getting a job at said company but a talent finder or hiring agency under a 90 day contract to hire. Quite often the parent company will have multiple hiring agencies looking for candidates for the same job.
    - aerhardt 3y ago
      The point still stands, any self-respecting job platform should be able to verify agents.
CoastalCoder 3y ago
Interestingly, I just got a sketchy-looking job lead from a posting I made on this month's "Who wants to be hired?" thread. I'm being very cautious, and I'll be curious to see how this plays out.
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  I wouldn’t be surprised if half the interest you get from posting there are fake emails from nosy HNers wondering about your creds.
scubazealous 3y ago
A member of my family was applying for jobs about 9 years ago and they had very little adult work experience but needed the income and health insurance. One of the first "employers" who gave them an interview was extremely kind and willing to pay a decent salary for her to work as a secretary, said she got the job and had her file paperwork including her SSN, full name, current and past addresses, bank information, etc. Later she had a call from the bank about some suspicious activity, cards were activated, and a pair of expensive shoes was bought under her name. She was not the only one in the waiting room for "interviews" that day and I am sure they stole the identity of plenty of them who were just down on their luck looking for work. The identity information is still out there in the hands of these crooks. Always vet potential employers.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  Entirely possible the interviewer was hired by the bad actor to do the interviews and gather the info. Find someone with HR experience, tell them you're setting up a new office, blah blah, then they won't even feel like they're lying because they really don't even realize they are.
guenthert 3y ago
> Some job boards make this way easier than it should be. That's quite some understatement. Last year some 'recruiter' was contacting me with such a scam. The company she purported to represent even put on their web page a warning that they were aware of such dealings. I reported this to LinkedIn, but was told to sod off. LinkedIn clearly only cares whether you pay them.
commandlinefan 3y ago
> pretending to be real companies I've thought about this quite a bit - if I'm ever on the market again, I would only apply to a company that somebody I know already works at so I can verify with them that it's legitimate. It used to be you'd look for referrals to get your foot in the door with a company, now I'd use them in reverse.

lnxg33k1 3y ago

There is also another kind, job postings that then send you coupons to use some company service, i got few times like, oh thanks for applying to company distrupting travel, while you wait here a coupon to use our services

Our_Benefactors 3y ago

Also be aware that any job that asks you to pay them as a condition of employment is a scam. This doesn’t apply just to the scenario above but also MLM schemes for example.

xerox13ster 3y ago

Maybe I'm an exceptionally paranoid person (high probability) but I would never ever ever send payment or my payment info if I am looking for a job. I will input that into a HRM application like Workday or ADP, but no salary could convince me to give up that information directly before I've signed legal paperwork like a contract or tax documents. What I'm far more concerned about with totally fake job listings are the foreign placement agencies that harvest data from resumes and interview native citizens to get information and terminology to prop up their foreign candidate's resume's over the native candidates. The placement agency makes their candidates look far better based on the information mined from the resumes and interviews, they learn how to speak about technology they don't fully understand. The employee gets a placement, the Business gets a cheap H1B indentured worker, and the Agency gets a fatter commission for selling a "more qualified" candidate.

saulpw 3y ago
> Maybe I'm an exceptionally paranoid person (high probability) but I would never ever ever send payment or my payment info if I am looking for a job. Sure, we all get wiser as we get older. Would you have known this when you were 22?
- xerox13ster 3y ago
  Yes, it would never have made sense to me to pay money to someone to earn money. I was 18/19, and had stupidly dropped out of a college I hated for a relationship and found a job posting in the paper for a "warehouse job". I called, they said come in for an interview. I was ecstatic, what a win! My girlfriend drove me there, and it was a door-to-door steak sales job. They told me all the usual you can make so much money doing this, you work your way up and make connections and grow your area. They told me at the end when I was almost into it that I would have to buy the steaks from them and pay myself off the difference. I looked at the dumbasses around me buying it with fresh eyes and saw that they were people VERY MUCH not in good places in life and got up and walked out. 2 years of bullshit jobs later, I found my way back to the tech career I went to college for, but in support not development bc degree issues.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    "This is not a job--it's a business opportunity, and like all business opportunities, it requires a meaningful up-front investment from you. This investment buys you access to the tools you need to [...]" - Fraudster I can see trusting or impressionable 18-19 year olds falling for this, especially if this is their first interviewing experience and job offer--they might think it's normal.
throwup238 3y ago
You’re not exceptionally paranoid. The only time I ever reveal bank information is after signing an employment agreement and it’s always on the direct deposit authorization provided by ADP/Gusto/w.e HR software they use, never to a company representative. I’m seeing more and more applications ask for DEI information like sexual orientation and gender identification too - information that I consider almost as private. I can’t believe anyone fills them out sight unseen. But as the sibling comment says, wisdom comes with age (mistakes)

shams93 3y ago

Yeah I ran into this, people are fishing for social security numbers for fraud, if the salary is too good to be true its a good sign its a fraud post.

toss1 3y ago
especially if they are posting that salary — an awful lot of companies like to keep salaries secret and (illegally) discourage discussion. Posting a salary for Position XYZ which is higher than current employees doing XYZ is a good way to generate discontent. But dangling a fat juicy carrot to lure suckers into a fraud? ...

add-sub-mul-div 3y ago

> there's another worse issue going on with actually 100% fake job listings. We've made coding, automation, content creation, and publishing so easy by now that the balance of capability has been tipped to low ability bad actors. And they're gaining the power to make the internet just unusable.

aerhardt 3y ago
Point taken but the job platforms must be doing a terrible job with countermeasures. I don’t think in many cases these countermeasures need to be that advanced, it doesn’t sound particularly hard for a job posting website to verify that someone works at Ford or whatever.
- pixl97 3y ago
  >that someone works at Ford or whatever. Quite often when you're getting a job at Ford or whatever, you're not actually getting a job at said company but a talent finder or hiring agency under a 90 day contract to hire. Quite often the parent company will have multiple hiring agencies looking for candidates for the same job.
  - aerhardt 3y ago
    The point still stands, any self-respecting job platform should be able to verify agents.

CoastalCoder 3y ago

Interestingly, I just got a sketchy-looking job lead from a posting I made on this month's "Who wants to be hired?" thread. I'm being very cautious, and I'll be curious to see how this plays out.

hombre_fatal 3y ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if half the interest you get from posting there are fake emails from nosy HNers wondering about your creds.

scubazealous 3y ago

A member of my family was applying for jobs about 9 years ago and they had very little adult work experience but needed the income and health insurance. One of the first "employers" who gave them an interview was extremely kind and willing to pay a decent salary for her to work as a secretary, said she got the job and had her file paperwork including her SSN, full name, current and past addresses, bank information, etc. Later she had a call from the bank about some suspicious activity, cards were activated, and a pair of expensive shoes was bought under her name. She was not the only one in the waiting room for "interviews" that day and I am sure they stole the identity of plenty of them who were just down on their luck looking for work. The identity information is still out there in the hands of these crooks. Always vet potential employers.

Scoundreller 3y ago
Entirely possible the interviewer was hired by the bad actor to do the interviews and gather the info. Find someone with HR experience, tell them you're setting up a new office, blah blah, then they won't even feel like they're lying because they really don't even realize they are.

guenthert 3y ago

> Some job boards make this way easier than it should be. That's quite some understatement. Last year some 'recruiter' was contacting me with such a scam. The company she purported to represent even put on their web page a warning that they were aware of such dealings. I reported this to LinkedIn, but was told to sod off. LinkedIn clearly only cares whether you pay them.

commandlinefan 3y ago

> pretending to be real companies I've thought about this quite a bit - if I'm ever on the market again, I would only apply to a company that somebody I know already works at so I can verify with them that it's legitimate. It used to be you'd look for referrals to get your foot in the door with a company, now I'd use them in reverse.