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As ProPublica has reported, cybercriminals are flooding the internet with fake job ads and even bogus company hiring websites whose purpose is to steal your identity and use it to commit fraud. It’s a good reminder that you should vet potential employers as closely as they vet you.

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Here are ten tips on how to spot such scams:

1. Beware of abnormally high salaries

One of the ways criminals entice people is by advertising unusually generous pay. If the salary being offered in a job ad is way above what you see in other ads for similar positions, be wary. You can get an idea of average weekly earnings by industry using the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages or check out salary calculators on websites such as Glassdoor.

2. Don’t accept jobs you didn’t apply for

Sometimes cybercriminals obtain the contact information of people who have submitted their résumés to job-seeking websites and then email them to say they are preapproved for a job. These are bogus messages whose main purpose is to get people to share additional information, which the scammers will use to commit fraud. The emails may also include malware that can infect your computer. Ignore such messages and don’t open any attachments.

3. Be wary of job ads touting the need to verify your identity at the outset

Ads that demand you share your driver’s license or Social Security number as part of an initial application, or very soon after, are a significant red flag. Legitimate employers rarely request such information until much later in the hiring process.

4. Take the text of the job ad and put it in Google

Cybercriminals sometimes reuse the same job ads over and over, posting them on LinkedIn, Facebook and other online platforms with only slight modifications. If you spot an ad that features virtually identical language to that used by various employers all over the country, it could be a scam.

5. Research the identity of the person posting the ad

Cybercriminals are creating fake profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook meant to resemble individuals at real companies who are posting job ads. One clue: a person claiming to work for a company in the U.S. while showing check-ins at locations in other countries. When in doubt, contact the companies directly to ask if they’re actually recruiting for the positions. If they’re not, report the suspect profiles to LinkedIn and Facebook.

6. Check the spelling and domains of company names

When you vet companies, be aware that cybercriminals sometimes steer potential applicants to fake websites they’ve created that mimic the sites of real companies — except that, say, an extra letter has been added to the company’s name. When job applicants can’t spell a company’s name right in a cover letter, recruiters are apt to toss those applications in the trash. Do the same with any companies that seemingly can’t spell their own names.

7. Avoid text-only interviews

The pandemic has made it necessary for many employers to conduct job interviews remotely via services like Zoom. But be cautious of hiring managers who insist on communicating only by email or text or using messaging platforms such as Telegram to conduct interviews. Sooner or later, a real employer will want to see and interact with a recruit, whether through a video call or in person. Cybercriminals typically don’t want you to hear their voices or see their faces, since it raises the chances you’ll realize they’re not who they say they are.

8. Don’t give out your credit card or phone account login

A real employer doesn’t need to know your credit card number, credit score or phone account login to process your job application. Cybercriminals sometimes ask for such information up front to commandeer your phone and finances, often under the pretense of needing to set you up with a company phone plan or purchase equipment you’ll need to do your job (see next item).

9. Don’t buy things on behalf of a potential employer

Beware of companies that, before you’re hired, offer to send you a check to purchase a computer or other equipment. It’s a variation on an old scam that involves criminals asking marks to send their own money to some third party with the promise that they will reimburse the marks. Inevitably, the reimbursement doesn’t come through, and the mark is left holding the bag.

10. If something feels suspicious, investigate — or walk away

If at any point in the job application or interview stage something feels wrong to you, don’t ignore the feeling. Ask yourself if you see any of the warning signs outlined above. Or pause and ask a trusted friend or relative for a reality check.

Originally published on ProPublica by Cezary Podkul and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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Platform wars are heating up and influencers may be prime beneficiaries…

Something strange is happening in social media: influencers are getting paid, sometimes directly by platforms.

To clarify; there have always been ways for creators with a large following to monetize their stats. Mainly, however, until recently that mostly involved sponsorships and affiliate merchandise, and the like.

On top of the efforts required to create winning content, getting paid for it was an additional job and creators got little assistance from the greatest beneficiaries of the work: the host platforms themselves.

Suddenly, it seems, the value of creators in bringing and keeping traffic for the platforms is so high, as a war rages between platforms for that traffic, that some have gone as far as initiating new programs to pay influential content makers directly.

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Naturally, YouTube has had a monetization program that requires elevated status to qualify for and then takes a more than 30% cut of the proceeds, but on the whole payment for creative content production has been minimal for all but the most massive stars in the social media firmament. Now, that appears to be changing, and fast.

Snap, a once hot destination, is trying to boost its attractiveness by paying out $1 million per day for popular posts. TikTok, the fastest growing platform recently, has also set up a fund to pay out to creators and says it will increase the fund to $1 billion.

All of this is not going unnoticed by the platforms with the most traffic, Facebook and its owned entity Instagram, and, in an unprecedented move, payments are beginning to flow on those platforms also. Twitter, Clubhouse and others have various plans in the works as well.

There’s a massive shift toward coveting creators as a result of competition for traffic and members

What this all boils down to is two things. There’s a war going on (in reality battles left and right in many areas of internet dominance) and the spoils are traffic growth, and that growth is only possible for the platforms if creators migrate in and stick around.

As long as Facebook, Instagram and Google’s YouTube were untouchable monopolies they did not need to admit that they needed the allegiance of creators and influencers.

As the only game in town, each in a different monopolized neighborhood, there was literally no where for the creators to run to. No more. Mainly TikTok and now upstarts like Clubhouse are changing the landscape and that is scary to the legacy platforms.

Anecdotal evidence points to the ability for talent to garner views and followers, via the algorithm settings that either promote or hide content from prospective consumers, as the prime mover, at least initially, for the creators to favor TikTok.

Stories abound of creators that, within days or weeks, were able to get millions of views due to the “democratic” openness of the TikTok system for featuring content based on less restrictive algorithms than the entrenched platforms.

The once invincible behemoths at Facebook and Google let greed get the best of them. It has been literally years since organic reach, the ability to get views and traffic just on the quality of the content, was possible on facebook and the price to reach an audience, with paid posts, just kept going higher and higher.

Now, due to this tectonic shift in power, from the platforms to the influencers and users, there is, unbelievably, a situation emerging where Facebook must appease the talent and creativity of the content creators if they want to remain relevant.

Pending antitrust actions and privacy issues are just adding to the shifting status and uncertain future of social media

In a sense, there was always a kind of unwritten rule of social media: the owners and creators of the platforms retained all the money and power with none of the liability or labor requirements.

That relationship, which is like slaves who built the great pyramids, but without the allowance for food or shelter, was doomed from the start as it is based on a lie.

Ultimately the platform has very little to offer, technological and software designs are easily replicated theses days, and these platforms are not in the business of generating any of content, yet they expect that content to be created for free by users.

This ridiculous valueless and vampiric scam has been lionized and worshiped as the ultimate internet success formula for more than a decade.

Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg, have stood as the ultimate arbiters of how to become obscenely rich by enticing the world to work and create content for your platform for zero renumeration.

Once a company, coincidentally one that originated in China, came along and decided not to worship the Zuckerberg formula, but to undercut it by giving creators an ever-so-slightly less terrible deal, the spell was broken.

Next, it was only a matter of time before the war over the real value began: the content itself that users and particularly top creators on each platform provide.

Not to say that TikTok is heroic or intentionally upset the apple cart as a result of any foresight or altruism, this is just the inevitable outcome of a failed and corrupt system eventually becoming mature and collapsing (slowly) under its own stupidity.

For now, this slight reprieve from endless exploitation is an extremely hopeful sign. Let’s hope that creator payouts and the competition for content, real content that has value regardless of which platform hosts it, will continue to rise in stature.

Any creators or influencers out there who are listening, do what you do best which is create, and now add the option to sell your services to the highest bidder to your toolkit and keep your eyes and ears open for the next, even more accommodative platform to emerge from the muck. Then go there.

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How to Avoid Being Scammed by Fake Job Ads