HOW TO SPOT WORK-AT-HOME SCAMS (and others)?
Copyright (c) 1995, Steven E. Weigand
Author: Steven Weigand, (weigand@ssnet.com).
Date of this revision: November 10, 1995
HTML markup, AOL abuse contact info and bibliographic revision by Nelson Chin of The Monster Board, January 2, 1997
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[Specific scams revealed |
Annotated Bibliography |
Closing Remark]
I, and a lot of others, have recently noticed the upsurge of
scams being misrepresented as legitimate job offers in the jobs.*
newsgroups. I have created this document to educate people a
little more on how to identify scams in general, including brief
explanations of specific scams. If you are thinking about
answering an ad for a work-at-home offer on the net, then you
should read this report first. You might discover that your
dreams of getting rich are being used by scammers to manipulate
you into giving them money.
I have NOT seen a legitimate and "workable" work-at-home offer
posted to any of the newsnet newsgroups AT ALL. Period. They
are all either scams, or they are so difficult to do that no
ordinary person can do them. Most of the work-at-home offers
fall under the category of "scams", and the small amount of
remaining offers are mostly just impossible to do or would
result in little to no income. Scams typically deceive people
about what it is they would be doing, take their money, and
then give them something totally useless in return. The
non-workable work-at-home offers try to deceive a person about
how difficult it is to make money doing the work.
They make their money off of selling you their information
packages, but they could care less if you can put their
information to use and actually make any money.
There just does not appear to be any legitimate and realistic
work-at-home businesses being offered on the net. I could
explain any one you want. And this is a serious offer: if you
are in doubt of any work-at-home offer, email me the ad you saw,
and ask me for my analysis of it. Any get-rich- quick scheme is
also a scam. Don't fall for any of them. Always question
yourself. Ask yourself why such a great offer exists, and
what's so special about yourself that *you* would be given such a
wonderful opportunity, (as opposed to the rest of the population
that's still struggling to make a buck).
I've been posting about scams for a while now, telling everyone
to mail me for more information. What I found to be somewhat
interesting is that, of the people who responded, most were
women. It could be that the men are too proud to ask for advice,
for it would reveal their weakness. Women, on the other hand,
may not be as concerned about their egos or insecurities
and may find it easier to ask for help more often. I just found
it odd that most of the people that are falling for these scams,
*seemingly*, are women; in particular, women in college. So a
message to all you concerned boyfriends and parents out there:
Warn your girlfriends and daughters about these scams. Become
aware of them and teach others. Throughout this document, I use
the terms "scams" and "scammers." How I define a scam is as
follows: A scam is anything that is used to get money from
others by promising them something they want, deceiving them
about what it is they are getting, and then giving them
something useless or unrealistically difficult to do (more
difficult than it was described to be). A scammer is anyone who
is in charge of the scam. How I define "work-at-home offers" is
as follows: A work-at-home offer is anything being offered to
people whereby they would be able to make money at home doing it.
This falls into 2 categories: Work-at-home JOB offers and
work-at-home INFORMATION PACKAGES. The work-at-home job offers
involve people actually working for a real company, making a
salary or a commission, while the work-at-home information
packages merely give people the information needed for them to
start their own home businesses. A trend on the net is for
scammers to pretend to give work-at-home job offers, but
what people actually get for their money is nothing more than an
information package which usually turns out to be useless.
The key word throughout this entire document is "deception". The
scammers will try to deceive you about what it is they are
offering you for your money. The best defense for deception is
wisdom and being able to see things for what they are. This
involves arming yourself with the knowledge contained in this
document and being a good researcher. Always know exactly
what it is you are getting for your money. You need to research
these work-at-home offers thoroughly (or anything being sold on
the net for that matter). Be relentless until you get all of
your questions answered from these people. Never give anyone any
of your money until you have an exact picture of what it is you
are getting for your money. The following is a list of some
things to look for that give away scams on the net. These are
just things to look for and do not necessarily indicate that
something is a scam or not. It's up to your intuition to
determine if something is really a scam. Hopefully this list
will provide you with some food for thought:
- 0. General rule of thumb: Scammers will do EVERYTHING they can
possibly do to dress up their scam in order to make it look
legitimate. If it looks like a legitimate offer, it may just be
that the scammer is adept at fooling people. Throughout this
list, you will learn some of the techniques that scammers use to
trick you. Pay attention! :-)
- The return email address is not present, and all you are
given is a postal mail address with which to reply. If they
have no return email address, it's like forging their names or
sending anonymous postings. They can't be tracked down and held
responsible for fraud if they have no return address. That way,
they protect themselves.
- They are posting from an anonymous account. You may see on
the bottom of the article: "This was posted using the anonymous
service." Typically, the return email address will be something
like, "an10202@anon.penet.fi", for example. Read #1. This is
almost a dead give-away that it's a scam. They might explain
their use of an anonymous mail server as, "Oh, I use an
anonymous mail service because my regular account doesn't allow
me to use email." Well, that's impossible, since, in order to
have an anonymous email account, you FIRST need to have a normal
email account!
They might also say that their normal account doesn't allow them
to post to newsgroups, so they have to go through an anonymous
service. That's fine, and sometimes that is the case. But
then, why don't they list their "real" name and email account?
They usually just say that you should reply to the anonymous
account and do not give you their real account addresses.
- They give a P.O. box for a physical address. While it is
fairly normal for legitimate businesses to give you a P.O. box,
it still raises suspicion. Since there is no REAL physical
address given, you really have no idea where this guy lives in
reality. He can't be tracked down. Anyone can get a P.O. box.
It doesn't mean that the company really exists.
- They don't give a voice phone #. Often times, you will see a
scam list a phone number of some sort. Most people don't even
try it out to see if it's real or not. They just figure, "Oh,
he lists a phone number I can call! Good to know, but I'll just
send him email." OR, if you call the phone #, what you might
find is a fax machine on the other side! This means that someone
has setup a stupid little fax machine to take complaints/orders.
So that means that you can't call the guy up and talk to him
voice-to-voice and confront him about his scam. This
way, he can ignore you if he wants. It's a scam!
Another good possibility is that the phone number is a fake. If
you call it, you may get someone on the other end who has no
idea about what you are saying. In that case, the scammer just
put any random phone number down on the ad so that he would look
more legitimate.
- They will often tell you, "Send a SASE - self addressed
stamped envelope - for FREE information!" This is certainly
more attractive than telling you to send them money for a report
on how to make money. You don't want to be sending any money,
right? And they know it.
But two things happen here:
- You will be sent back a short 3 page response saying
something like, "This is a great deal! Lots of people are doing
it, and you could make a TON of money! All you have to do is
send us $25 to get you started, and we'll send you back all the
software needed! Just $25!" Now, for most people, $25 is a
pretty small investment, so they don't think twice about it. If
it were $50, then that's another story. Most of these scammers,
through trial-and-error, have determined that the threshold
amount to ask for is about $25. So if you get a "contract" or
something back asking for $25, you can automatically know that
it's probably a scam. $25 isn't enough to make *most* people
start to call the guy up on the phone or ask him about his offer,
and the scammers know it.
- But let's take this further... They asked you for a SASE
for their free information. Well, the most you can stuff in an
envelope with only one U.S. stamp on it is about 3 pages. You
need more stamps on your envelope if you want to send large
amounts of stuff. So the total amount of information they're
sending you is pretty small. Why, then, couldn't they simply
just email you their documents? It's pretty simple to type up
the documentation of only 3 pages, isn't it? They could just
store it into a file and send people the file whenever they get a
request over email. But they don't. They want you to mail them
through the postal mail for one of 3 reasons:
- They don't expect their email accounts
to be around for very long, because they realize that others are
going to tell their system administrators about them, and they
will be deleted soon.
- They realize that it's psychologically
more appealing to people to send their SASE's away to a physical
address, rather than just an email address, since it feels more
legitimate.
- Although this is more rare, people like to collect
the names and addresses of "suckers" and sell lists of these
people to other advertisers/scammers; think about it: if you had
a scam or some worthless product to sell, wouldn't you love to
get your hands on a list of people that are identified as naive
and easy to scam? Lists like these can be sold for as much as 10
cents per name! If you receive 1000 names, that's $100!
- What's becoming more frequent these days is that the scammers
will forge their names as FEMALES instead of males. 99% of the
time, the scammers are all males on the net (that's from
personal observation, not from anything I can substantiate). But
we're now starting to see *supposed* females offering these
work-at-home scams. What you'll see is that the return email
address will read something like, "work4u@aol.com (Mary Smith)".
Well, if you know anything about computers, you can make up any
name you want. I could change my name to "Elmer Fudd" if I
wanted to. In this case, the person changed HIS name to "Mary
Smith". And if HE lists a physical postal address or a phone
number, he will say to address it to Mary Smith.
Why? Why would they want to make you believe that a female
was in charge of this "job offer"? Well, if you're like me,
you believe that females are more trustworthy and truthful than
males. It's instinctive and inherent in our programming to trust
women -- it goes back to the whole mother-child relationship.
These scammers know that if they give a male name, you are
going to be more suspicious of them than if they give a female
name! Don't let them play on your emotions / instincts. Treat
every "job offer" as a male, even though it may list a female
name. It may just turn out to be a female on he other side,
but you shouldn't just trust it is so.
- They give company names, like "Scholar Technologies", for
example. Now, 99% of the people aren't going to verify the
existence of the company, but you should be one of those 1% that
does. You can make a quick call to Long Distance Information,
and ask the operator if he/she has a phone # for that particular
company. If the operator can't provide any phone #, then the
company does NOT exist. Another thing you can do is give a call
to the BBB (Better Business Bureau) in the company's area to see
if they have any complaints on the company. If they have no file
for the company (ie, they don't even know that the company
exists), then it may be bad, but you don't know.
- Beware of netnews postings that offer these work-at-home scams
which have one posting RIGHT after it from another person saying,
"Oh, this is a great offer! I did this a while ago, and I'm
making good money!" It's usually from the same scammer or a
collaborator of his, even though it's from a different email
address. It gives you the idea that it must be legitimate,
because someone else says it is; but you really don't know who
that someone else is, do you? There may be dozens of "other
people" following up to the original ad, all saying that it is
a wonderful job, but they could all be forged articles!
Inspect the articles further. Compare the styles of writing with
the original ad, and if they match, you have to suspect a scam.
Note: I have encountered this before, where there were almost a
dozen follow-ups from the same scammer, each pretending to be
someone else who just loved the job. In that particular case, I
noticed that everyone who replied to the article was from AOL
(aol.com). Furthermore, I noticed that all of the replies were
written in the same style, often making the same spelling
mistakes and capitalizing words inadvertently.
- Beware of postings on newsnet whereby you see the SAME
work-at-home scam posted over and over daily. What you might see
on your news reader is:
misc.jobs.misc
Mary Smith Work at Home!
Mary Smith !!! Work at Home !
Mary Smith Can You Start by 9/29?
Mary Smith This is a GREAT Opportunity!
Notice that the same person has posted the same "offer" over
and over again in the same news group, one right after the
other. The only thing they changed was the title of the article,
because they know that if they use the same title, then
"threaded" news readers will just display:
Mary Smith 4 Work at Home
(In other words, a threaded news reader will just explain
that there are 4 letters from the same person, and it won't make
much psychological impact on suckers.) This is the sign of a
truly desperate scammer who knows nothing about netiquette.
Anytime you see something like this, just realize it's a scam.
- Beware of postings on newsnet whereby you see the same
work-at-home scam posted to DOZENS of newsgroups. This,
combined with #9, is called "spamming". Spamming just means,
"scamming people with amazing zeal across many newsgroups."
Spammers are the worst kind of scammers. They can't take a hint.
They will post multiple times daily to multiple newsgroups, even
when they've been exposed as a scam by someone on the net. Just
ignore them. I don't care how legitimate the "offer" sounds; if
it's being "spammed", then it is a scam! What's worse is that
they're learning now how NOT to cross-post. When you cross-post
on netnews, you will see a bunch of newsgroups at the top of
your news, representing all the newsgroups that the same article
was posted to. If you are annoyed by the article, you can
simply press just one key to junk the article in EVERY newsgroup,
not just the one you're in currently. So they've learned NOT to
cross-post. Instead, they'll post the article in each group
discretely. That means that you, the annoyed reader of these
newsgroups, has to see that scam OVER and OVER again in many
newsgroups without being able to just press a key to make it go
away.
- If you see something in the offer like, "This is NOT a
scam!", then it's most likely a scam. It's like saying, "Trust
me!" :-) Just because the guy says it's not a scam, it doesn't
mean that you should believe him! It's the last resort of a
truly desperate man. You'd be surprised at how many gullible,
naive people there are who will erase all feelings of suspicion
when they see, "This is not a scam! ... This is a LEGITIMATE
offer!"
- Beware of AOL (aol.com), CompuServe (CompuServe.com),
Prodigy, and Netcom (netcom.com) users. I have found that the
majority of scams are coming from people on these services. Keep
an eye out for them. Generally, ANY public internet service
provider is capable of harboring many scammers. Be warned!
On the other side of the coin, I have found that one *can* trust
people from education (.edu) and government (.gov) sites much
*more* than any commercial (.com, .org, or .net) site for the
following reasons:
- Non-anonymity -- They don't just let ANYONE come onto
their computers and use them if they have enough money, no
questions asked. Instead, they HAVE to be students or on the
faculty for ".edu" sites. And for ".gov" sites, they HAVE to
be employees of the organization. This way, the system
administrators at these sites ALWAYS know who their users are,
where they are physically, and their phone #'s. This is not true
for a lot of public internet service providers (like Netcom, for
example), where all it takes is for you to fill out an on-line
form and send in some money. On many public internet services,
people can sign-on under aliases without the system
administrators knowing, or even caring, about it.
- Accountability -- Folks from ".edu" and ".gov" sites have
the most to lose when they try to pull scams from their sites.
In the case of ".edu" sites, a student could be thrown out of
school, or a faculty member could be fired. There was a case 4
years ago at the University of Delaware, my alma mater, whereby
a student was thrown out of school after pulling a scam on
someone through the internet. He also had to pay back the money
he scammed off of others. If a professor tried to pull a scam,
could you imagine how tough it would be for him/her to find
another job after being fired, especially in such a tight job
market? In the case of ".gov" sites, people can be fired
and their security clearances could be revoked indefinitely.
Whereas, in the case of commercial internet services, often
times, the only thing that they can do is kick someone off their
computers, but the scammers can usually get right back on the
internet with another service. And good luck trying to get your
money back from people on commercial internet services. At least
in ".edu" and ".gov" sites, your chances of getting your money
back are fairly high. Therefore, for these reasons, I feel that
people from ".edu" and ".gov" sites are a *little* more
trustworthy than the other sites. My hypothesis is verified by
continuous scanning of the internet for scams; I only found the
"Make Money Fast" scam being posted by ".edu" people, but then,
most of them didn't know it was a scam to begin with, and
this scam is much more benign than all the other ones. Mind you,
"trust no one" is a good credo.
- Some people are "kind-hearted" scammers. These are scammers
that don't know they are scammers. They might think they're
doing something totally legitimate, but in fact, are pulling a
scam. For example, in the case of that old "Make Money Fast"
pyramid scheme that you've probably seen a dozen times before,
some people don't know it's a scam and post it to a bunch of
groups. These could even be people on ".edu" and ".gov" sites,
so watch out! These people are just naive and don't know that
what they're doing is a scam, so they'll be the ones that
often seem most trustworthy and sincere. If what they're doing
sounds like a scam, ask them why they don't think it is a scam.
If they tell you something like, "It's not a scam, because the
person I got it from said it wasn't a scam," then you have
reason to be worried. Be warned!
- Any "job offer" which costs money up front is a scam.
Anytime you hear the excuse, "We charge you $25, because that's
to weed out those people who aren't serious about this," then
you are being scammed. NO legitimate business offer will ask
for $25 up front. If you're the one who's offering legitimate
work-at-home work, you're not going to simply ask for $25 from
your employees; you're going to call the people up and ask them
for their references and resumes! If you're told to send money
for this reason, then just tell the scammer that you're
suspicious that he's trying to scam you, that you would gladly
pay him $25, or even DOUBLE that, but only AFTER you've made the
riches that he promises, and see what he says. If he's a
scammer, you won't hear from him after that, or else he'll send
you a letter back with lots of cuss words in it. If he's
legitimate, he won't mind waiving the startup charge to you,
because he's confident that he'll be getting double the money
back.
This goes back to the difference between "job offers" and
"information packages." So many times I have seen scammers
trying to pass information packages off as job offers. They just
say that the $25 is to pay for start-up fees or to make sure that
you are serious about it. Be warned about anyone that tries to
do this to you if you think you're being offered a job. It's
definitely not a job being offered. You wouldn't be working for
anyone; instead, you'll get a useless information package for
your money.
True, you do need to invest money in any business that you
want to start. But we're not talking about "starting your own
home business." A lot of these scams aren't about that. Instead,
they use phrases like, "Sign up with us, working at home, and
you'll make tons of money." They're not trying to sell you a
step-by-step guide to starting your own business at home. They
know that people are generally too lazy to start their own home
businesses, so instead, they try to make it sound like they're
actually offering you a job whereby you can work at your home.
But if they ask for money, it's usually a good tip-off that
they're scamming you. If they were really offering you a job at
home, then they'd be asking you for references, a resume, a
phone interview, etc.
- There will be a sense of urgency in the job offer. The title
of the message might be, "Can you start by 9/29??" It makes you
think, "Oh, this can't be a scam, because a scam doesn't have
time limits on it! So it must be legitimate." Wrong! It's just
a device that the scammers use to prevent you from thinking hard
about the scam. If you have no time to check the company out,
then they've got you! Check back in another week, and you'll see
the same scam posted, but this time it will read, "Can you start
by 10/7?". Someone pointed out to me that the secret of making
money is timing. "Timing is everything." From my experience,
this tactic is used more often falsely than legitimately. Timing
is hardly "everything" in a stable work-at-home business. Maybe
in the stock-market, but not here. If timing is indeed
involved, then it falls into the "Get Rich Quick" concept, and
we all know that these things are usually scams.
- There will be a sense of popularity in the "job offer". As I
already stated in item #8 (above), if you think that others are
doing the work, too, then you'll be inclined to believe that it
is not a scam. So you might see the following written in the job
offer: "If you don't hear from us immediately, don't worry!
We've been having so much trouble keeping up with the demand
lately. But we will get to you!" It misleads you into thinking
that tons of other people are doing this, so it must be
legitimate. WRONG! Just assume that nobody but yourself has
responded so far.
- There will be a sense that they want you, because YOU are
special to them. For example, the scam might say: "We know
you're smart, because you're one of the elite few who has
figured out how to get onto the internet to read this message.
That's why we're able to offer YOU this great deal!" They want
you to be thinking to yourself that you are special, and that
the reason why everyone else in the world isn't doing this
wonderful job and making tons of money is because they aren't as
smart as you. Hogwash! It's just another trick they're
trying to pull on you to bypass your logical reasoning brain and
get right to your emotional/irrational brain. Stay firmly
grounded in reality. You are NOT special to any of these people.
You are just a dollar sign to them.
- There's just a general vagueness about exactly *what* it is
you'd be doing. Here's a typical example of something you might
see:
"Have you ever dreamed about making $1000, $2000, or even
$3000 PER WEEK?! Well, stop dreaming about it and DO
something about it! If you're in a dead-end job or you're
unemployed, now is the perfect time to say YES to your future.
Don't pass up this wonderful opportunity to better yourself.
Send SASE for more information..." You can see that this ad says
absolutely nothing to you about what it is you'd be doing. It's
so vague that nobody can flame it for any reason. So you will
NOT see people responding to the article with a thousand letters
like, "This is scam! Don't fall for it!" These scammers are
clever that way. This is exactly why you can assume it's
nothing more than a scam. If the people who posted the ad
thought it was something people might like to hear, then they
wouldn't try to disguise it; they'd just come right out and tell
you what it was they were selling. Instead, they are afraid
that someone's going to be able to identify it as a scam. This
way, they can send their scam offer directly to the suckers out
there, and the suckers won't see anything negative about it.
- Beware of "Money Back Guarantees." This is another thing
scammers use to mislead you into thinking that what they're doing
is legitimate. If you get taken for $25, do you really think
you'll get your money back even if the guy gave you a money back
guarantee? And what are you going to do when he doesn't give you
the money back? Are you going to spend $100 just to file a law
suit for $25, not to mention off-time from your day job and
lawyer fees? The scammers all know that you're not going to file
a suit against them for a measly $25. Therefore, just pretend
that you did not see the money back guarantee statement written
on the ad.
- "Information Packages." Here, the idea is that if you come
up with a good money-making idea, you will share your idea with
others for a price. Again, the price is usually $25. The
package is usually advertised as being a "complete system." It
sometimes misleads people into believing that if they purchase
the package, they will be able to start a business immediately,
painlessly, and without any other help, when in fact, they are
the ones who will have to do most of the work in setting up their
own businesses. And sometimes it might mislead people into
thinking that the package is just a startup kit used to
facilitate their "employment" in some other company, when in
fact, they're just being sold information. They make false
claims that hundreds of people have used their packages to make
money, when in fact, nobody has. When you get the package, you
will find that you cannot utilize the information at all. In the
end, you will have wasted your $25 for a package of perhaps 20
pages long which is absolutely useless.
- "No experience necessary. No resumes needed. No interviews
neeeded. No references needed. No education requirements
necessary. Etc." These are things you should beware of if
someone is offering you a work-at-home job. I don't know of too
many normal jobs that are given to just anyone without an
interview, without a resume, without education, without
references, etc. A big warning light should be going off in your
mind whenever you encounter one of these "job offers". These job
offers will often be accompanied by "start-up/membership fees."
Now, if you were a legitimate company offering a job, which
would you rather do:
- Ask your applicants for money to prove he/she is the right
person for the job? or
- Ask your applicants for their references, an interview,
etc.? After all, these job offers will almost always suggest
that one could be making tons of money, and if that is so, I
doubt an employer would want to give that money to some
uneducated slob that he/she doesn't even know. If it were true
that any uneducated slob could do the job, then why doesn't the
employer merely hire a bunch of people at, say, $6.00 an hour to
do the job, and then the employer could pocket the "tons of
money" for him/herself?? It just doesn't make sense. What
will normally happen is that you will pay your start-up fee,
they will take it, and then give you an impossible task which
will yield no income for you whatsoever.
Infinity...
In the future, I'll be adding to this list, but for now, that
should suffice. You can start to see the patterns for yourself
on your own. |