Sunday, July 3, 2022

Scam Analysis: The Fake Job Offer

A reader of /r/scam posted this "job offer" and asked if it was a scam. 

There are a couple red flags. 

* While an employer can definitely run a credit report on a candidate, it is generally paid for by the employer. Asking a candidate to pass a credit report THEN come back to the employer is extremely fishy, esp. when there's not even a candidate number, employer profile, or such. 

* The grammar is actually quite bad with several capitalization errors, typos, and just very awkward phrasing. Why would I not "think you are fit for the job" if I applied, and you wrote "we think you are qualified"? 

* "Once your report is verified"? Was the candidate supposed to send a screenshot of the report to the employer? How can that be verified? 

* What the heck is "send me a shot"? Screenshot (of what?)?  Shout?  

What was not shown was the actual email link to clickfreescore.com where I suspect an affiliate link code was included but not shown. 

What will very likely happen is the person who got the credit report will simply never hear back from the job again, and/or likely to be blocked or spam-filed. Because the job ad is fake. The entire purpose is to get the person to sign up for clickfreescore, which is actually a credit monitoring service with a subscription cost, with a 7-day free trial. 

A quick search online with "clickfreescore affiliate link" showed that the website is legitimate, and does have an affiliate program, but the terms also specified that participants MAY NOT perform "job board marketing", and definitely "not run offers on sites that offer fake products or services". 

So please report this fake job to both ClickFreeScore (support@_____) and where you found the ad. Include the LINK (where there should be a link code, so they get credit for misleading you) and the URL of the ad. 



No comments:

Post a Comment