A survey by PasswordManager.com has found that one in three job seekers has fallen for, and responded to, fake job scams over the past two years.
“Nearly 4 in 10 respondents, all of whom have searched for a job within the last two years, say they’ve encountered job postings that turned out to be a scam,” the researchers write. “When asked which websites they encountered the fake jobs on, the top three answers respondents gave were Craigslist (47%), Indeed (44%), and Facebook Marketplace (44%).”
The top three industries targeted by these scams are the retail (24%), healthcare (23%), and service (22%) sectors. Most of the scam postings were for jobs offering salaries between $25,000 and $100,000. 60% of people who applied for these scams said they were contacted by a fake recruiter. Nearly half said they were interviewed via text or email.
Daniel Farber Huang, Subject Matter Expert at PasswordManager, stated, “Be conscientious when applying for jobs online. Increasingly, we are seeing company job postings requesting applicants to not only provide a resume and cover letter, but to also create applicant accounts on their job portals (often requiring you to retype everything included in the resume – ugh!) and may request information on prior employment and salary history.”
He continued, “Understandably, a job seeker will want to make their application as attractive as possible and is therefore pressured to provide more information rather than less. Until you are formally hired, there are very few reasons to provide a social security number or date of birth. If a background check is required where you are asked for that or other sensitive information, use your judgment on when it’s appropriate to share your data.”
New-school security awareness training can give your employees a healthy sense of suspicion so they can avoid falling for these types of scams.
