How to Spot a Work at Home Scam
In the search for work at home opportunities, there's a LOT of scams out there. Many people who first set out looking to work from home fall prey to these scams. Here are some tips on how to spot a scam and some common scams to look out for.
If the job, business opportunity, or whatever you are looking into has any of the following, STOP! Do your research, ask around. Here are some red flags:
- They ask for a fee. It can be disguised as a processing fee, a fee to cover the cost of materials. There are very few legitimate businesses or opportunities out there that will ask for a fee.
- Claims of making a large amount of money in a short amount of time. Working from home is work and it usually takes time, no matter what you're doing, to make a good amount of income.
- No experience necessary and that it's easy work. They claim anyone can do it, that it's easy and takes very little effort. Most legit companies are not going to take this advertising route.
- Their email address or website is from a free service. If their email address is from a free email service such as Hotmail or Yahoo, or from an ISP such as sbcglobal.com or aol.com. Or their website is on a free server such as geocities or freewebs. If they can't even buy their own domain name, that's a huge red flag.
There are a lot of email scams to beware of that claim to be a big company you may be signed up with, such as Paypal, asking you to change your password, among other things. It may look completely legit, but once you do click on that link in the email and change your password, you'll find your Paypal account drained. Before you click on ANYTHING, put your mouse over the link to see where it actually goes (you may have to right click and see "Properties" depending on your browser).Be careful out there!
Brenda Boggs is an Internet guru, in marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and new technologies. She successfully runs two revenue sharing websites, http://www.bloggerparty.com and http://www.reviewparty.com, where members actually make money just by participating.