How to avoid online job scams targeting the unemployed

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The Better Business Bureau recently warned that they have received 15,000 complaints about possible job scams on the Internet this year.

Fake companies are targeting the unemployed, and often ask for financial or personal information that hackers can use to break into a person’s bank accounts or steal an identity. In some cases, the bogus company collects personal information for the sole purpose of selling it to marketing firms.

Alison Doyle, job search expert for About.com, told Here & Now‘s Robin Young that one sign of a scam is if an applicant is asked to pay for something, including training materials or a background check.

Doyle said it’s difficult to determine if a company is legitimate, because they tend to use dozens of fake names. So she offers some simple, but effective advice.

“If anything doesn’t look right to you, Google the company name plus ‘scam,’” Doyle said. If the company has been flagged, the Better Business Bureau or the Ripoff Report will likely have a warning listed online.

In some cases, these fake job listings even appear on legitimate career services sites, like Monster or Career Builders.

“It’s very hard to vet everybody who’s posting a job,” Doyle said. “It’s such a big business on the part of scammers, and they are making a lot of money on the backs of people who can least afford it.”

View tips on how to avoid online scams on the Here and Now website.

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