I find these jobs on a variety of web pages, from Craigslist to Dice, to CareerBuilder and Monster.com. Some of these pages deal with the technology sector, such as ManhattanJobs, but more often they deal with the entire gamete of career choices, spanning warehouse to call centers.
Recently I hit on a couple of ads that advertised accounting and face-to-face customer service, so I applied via email. What I got back shocked me: emails that seemed to have been written by kindergarteners, full of grammatical and spelling errors, some that seemed genuinely friendly and cordial, and some that asked for much more technical experience than I am used to dealing with.
Of those that were obviously false were those asking me to accept payments for them. Oh, you must use your own bank account - just cash the checks we send to you, and then send us a percentage. What was the problem? Sheik Ramma Damma Ding Dong lives in Arabia and cannot leave the country to do his business, and needs a trusted secretary to handle his affairs in NY.
Then there was the London Banker, who will send me the keys to his bungalow where I will find various wire transactions on his person computer - and all I need to do is accept them, go to his bank, pick them up and leave them in his safe for future use.
What about the email from a company that needs me to take Western Union receipts to my local supermarket, cash them, and then deposit a percentage into their account?
It amazed me how little these people know about email tracking. Sure the name on the email seemed genuine, but in the face of spelling errors, I usually decide to check the header of an email to see where it originated from.
If you don't know how to check this, it's simple: hover over the collapsed original email summary, and right-click. The menu will ask you if you want to "view header", so just clck on that option. A new window will open, showing the exact path that the email took to get to you. This list will include the original email account, the DNS servers that touched and passed it on, and what countries they are in, and the curious but tell-tale renaming of the sender of the email.
It's so simple, a child can do it.
Use this tool to check emails that send you links, too. Have you ever noticed a couple of links in spam emails, that are named differently, hoping to get you to click one or the other, just because one seemed more like the information that you needed? Just hover your mouse over the link carefully for a moment, and the link address will display, regardless of what the link is named. You'll probably note that they all go to the same place! Just be extra careful to keep your fingers off the mouse button. One false click could send you to a site that looks like your bank, but absolutely isn't.
I have written back to these scammers, warning them not to try it on me again. It's a matter of email and postal fraud, usually, and that can land them in the slammer for a goodly long time. Rarely do I ever get a reply back.
Beware of companies that ask you to work at home as a customer rep. Very often they pay by transaction, and this can mean that you may be working for cents instead of dollars an hour, all the while paying for your own equipment, telephone line and Internet service. Sure, you can work anytime you want, but that does not guarantee that you will process any transactions at 2am. Sometimes they won't pay you unless you get the customer to click on a link for you, or fill out a survey at the end. More than often it is completely commission based.
With a little know-how and common sense, you can navigate the Internet job search to lead you to fulfilling, well paying jobs that will not land you in jail.
