In a recent press announcement, the FBI warned of malicious scammers exploiting verification weaknesses in job networking sites. These scammers create legitimate-looking job posts to gain access to personal information and monetary assets from potential job seekers. They list fraudulent job postings to trick those seeking jobs into sharing their personal data or even making payments. The ads are not only a threat to job seekers, but also the reputations of the businesses being impersonated, as the scammers use legitimate information, stolen assets, and logos to imitate the real companies.
According to the FBI’s Internet Complaint Center (IC3), since 2019 this scheme has cost an average loss of $3000 per victim. Many victims have also reported that the fraudulent job scam has negatively impacted their credit scores.
Scammers imitate renowned businesses to post job listings on legitimate job seeking or networking sites. The FBI stated that these scammers have been successful in carrying out their attacks due to the relaxed verification standards on job recruitment websites. This has allowed anyone to post a job listing, without any sort of verification. To the job seeker, these fake job listings would appear alongside legitimate job listings posted by the company, making it difficult for applicants to differentiate between the actual job and the fraudulent job listing.
The FBI added many of these scammers will also copy official job postings and simply change the contact details. The fake contact details and links provided in the job listing will direct the victims to spoofed websites. These websites are populated with phony phone numbers and email addresses that are directly controlled by scammers. Personal information like contact details and email addresses are then collected to conduct additional scams or are simply sold.
Once these victims fall prey to the scam, they are offered remote jobs and are sent fake employment contracts to sign. The scammer then requests the victim to provide personal information such as their social security numbers, credit card information, driver’s license, and direct deposit details. At the end of this fraudulent hiring process, applicants are often asked to personally pay to conduct job training and background checks, which are supposed to be reimbursed in their first paycheck. Once the payment is received by the scammers they cease contact, leaving the victims without a real job and out a substantial amount of money.
The FBI did not share which of the job networking sites were implicated, however, in August of 2021, BleepingComputer reported a feature on LinkedIn that enabled anyone to post a job listing on behalf of any legitimate employer. Last week, Microsoft’s LinkedIn account published a transparency report that shared how many fake job postings were taken down in the last six months. The job networking site claimed its automated defenses removed 97.1% of all fake accounts during that period, adding up to 11.6 million fake employer and business accounts. In addition, over 85,000 fake accounts were also blocked after users reported them. The job networking site also removed 66.1 million scams and other spam content on LinkedIn.
The FBI highly recommends that job seekers verify all job listings on networking sites. Visit the businesses’ official website and even call the employer or the company’s HR department. Any job listing that asks for money during the hiring process is most likely a scam. The FBI also recommends that employers search for fake job listings linked to their company and report them to the website administrator. Employers should also restrict access to networking sites that the company uses.
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