I came across an article on avoiding job scams by CareerBuilder writer Rachael Zupek in the jobs portion of AOL (powered by CB).
The article educates job seekers on scams and how to avoid them. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, especially since the recession caused scammers to come out of the woodwork to take advantage of the droves of unsuspecting job seekers pouring into the Internets.
The funny thing is, some of the perpetrators of these scams couldn’t pass up the chance to spam the article. The six pages of comments are full of various scams laid out in all their glory.
The irony wasn’t lost on the commentators, one of whom said this:
I’m absolutely amazed – here we have scammers pushing their scams and probably some people falling for them – right here where an article tells you about scams and how to avoid them. These people are even bolder than I thought. I counted NINE comments above that have some website listed that they say is a legitimate “work from home” website. Unbelievable!!!
You can find the rest of the comments, along with a treasure-trove of scams, here.
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May 6th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Joel – this is too funny and thanks for highlighting one of, if not the biggest problem in the job board industry. Job scams are horrendous and omnipresent on almost every single job site on the web. That is precisely why I feel so strongly about what we are doing at LinkUp.com, where we have listings only from company websites themselves. The jobs on LinkUp are indexed ONLY from the employer’s website directly. There are no fake listings, no scam jobs, no spam, and no risk of identity theft, etc. The jobs are always current, often unadvertised, and never fake. It is simply the best jobs site on the web today.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Joel-
I forgot to tell you that I’m banker in Central Africa and it looks like wealthy uncle left you a fortune totaling somewhere near $14MM. After you’ve applied for this job, please email me your SS#, DOB, Drivers License, Bank Account #, your mothers maiden name, a strand of your hair and I’ll be sure to get back to you – regarding the job posting that is.
Courtesy of your Online Recruiting Site