FTC Rolls Out Stark Warning Against Rise In Online Job Scams

Making money online seems to be an alluring offer to many. But did you know that the growing rise in online job scams is a real threat in the tech world?

The FTC has just rolled out a new warning against the rise of such job scams dubbed task scams. These draw more people into making quick bucks via repetitive tasks. They also lure victims by promising them better rewards if they deposit a larger sum of funds.

While such scams were close to being non-existent four years back, the same cannot be said about today. A massive 5000 cases were reported this year and it seems like the figures are slowly but surely at a peak right now as well. These had to do with fraudsters who managed to trick 20k victims. Only some choose to report the incident so you can only imagine where actual figures stand.


Moreover, financial losses from matters like job scams tripled between the years 2020 to 2023. It went above the $220M mark for losses between Jan to June of this year. That’s nearly 40% of losses due to jobs called task scams and $41 million reporting stolen money incidents during the start of 2024.

You can think of this as the maneuver of gambling. Scammers are approaching victims through unsolicited texts found on WhatsApp and other social media apps. They offer an easy means to make funds and inform targets about performing a fixed set of tasks each day to make revenue. They might include liking content on platforms or providing a rating on products online through a certain app.

Such scams do impersonate real companies in the works like Deloitte, Airbnb, and Amazon. Moreover, some victims get tasks in the form of sets featuring 40 items. Most users get upgrades in the form of commissions after they complete sets for upgrades to another level.

Scams do appear so real and job seekers who are desperate to make a quick buck do get into the trap easier than others. There is a certain point where some commission arrives on the platform and victims have to add deposits to unlock the option for another withdrawal. But when depositing again, they realize that their funds are gone and this was a whole scam.

You’ll find plenty of threads on Reddit where people detail their entire experience and hope others can learn from their mistakes. So as a rule of thumb, anything appearing too good to be true is probably not.

Experts link it to the similarity of gambling. This has to do with the fact that you don’t know when you’ll get the task and what other alluring incentives it brings.

Sources: 1 / 2.

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