How to avoid work from home scams – How to be safe from online work at home scams

Your persistent search on the internet to find an answer to your unending quest for a legitimate work at home job and how to distinguish scams from the legitimate ones may have brought you to this article. The internet is overflowing with lots of articles written about how to earn money online which are all created around the concept of work from home opportunities.

However, just as there are two sides of a coin, so too, there are also exceptions contrary to every rule. At times it can be overwhelming to absorb the multitude of misleading information that would all seem to be confusing rather than being helpful. While it is absolutely possible to find legitimate online earning opportunities from the internet, there are also an abounding false sources of information that are deceptive and dishonest in nature but are likewise based entirely on the very concept of earning money online.

Let us now move on to a piece of critical advice, a friendly advice, that is. It is without doubt that almost everyone of us are already aware of this. I'm very sure that you must have read a lot of nagging advices from online articles written by real people with real experiences, spilling out their resentment and frustration to serve as a warning so that we could be informed, directly or indirectly, about the many forms and disguises of online work at home scams. But, nevertheless, consider mine as a friendly reminder to carry on with the ongoing crusade against online work at home scams.

And to those of you who have not read or heard about it yet, then I strongly suggest that you stick around and keep on reading, or keep on researching and learning to avoid regretful mistakes from making naive assumptions and from making uninformed decision.

With the increasing number of everyday people from all walks of life populating the internet search engines with search keywords such as “work from home jobs” or “earn money online”, in hopes of finding real online jobs, and with this countless number of people who are putting considerable amount of time and serious effort in trying so desperately to look for alternative means to earn money online, so too along with this surging popularity comes the proliferation and infestation of work at home scams scattered all over the internet.

The prevalence of cyberspace fraudsters is growing at an alarming rate comparable to virus threats that infects our computer system, that our only means of protection against such threats is to be well-informed of such fraudulent activities. Uninformed victims who are unaware of such scams are often drawn to attractive enticing offers stuffed with flowery words promising lucrative incomes without knowing that their life's worth of hard-earned savings is already given away to these ruthless creatures dwelling on the dark side of cyberspace. And yes, these scammers are sticking around for more victims to fall prey to their trap, in fact they have grown to love what they are doing not only as a hobby but also as a profession.

These scam artists saw a marketing potential to earn easy money online through fraudulent means by taking advantage of the trending popularity of the much sought after home based online job opportunities from people desperately seeking and pursuing every ways and means possible to earn a decent income through the internet.

And just as you thought you already found what you're looking for to earn easy money online, all too suddenly after days of waiting patiently your impending expectation looms with the harsh reality of falling victim to your own fantasies, you realized that you fell into a trap... now where did that come from, you wonder, you didn't see it coming, but it's too late by then to refund your mistaken investment.

Yes indeed, these scammers are growing more attuned and updated and always improving their strategy everyday, becoming even more pervasive and devoted to their cause, as they intensify to become full pledged swindlers dedicated only to the sole purpose of developing deceptive schemes designed to prey upon those who are most desperate and naive. And NO, screaming doesn't help, most particularly for the despairing ones who are driven by extreme urgency to take the risk to make uninformed decision, making them the most favorite vulnerable target of online scam artists, as the saying goes “come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly”.

The most common types of work at home scams are those that would require you to pay upfront fees. The most prevalent of these types of work from home job postings are surprisingly the ones which have been around for years and are still growing strong, still gaining momentum and recruiting lots of victims despite all the negative reviews written about them. Imagine how desperate people are nowadays to take such risk, holding on to false beliefs of gaining financial success in exchange for an initial registration fee for an unlimited access to a pool of work at home job listings such as:

1. Stuffing envelopes for cash which sounds too good to be true, wherein you will be required to recruit more victims after joining instead of doing the actual task of stuffing envelopes.

2. Taking online surveys for products and services to earn points convertible to cash, where you will soon realize that it is extremely impossible for you to really earn enough points, while benefiting only the survey site who will earn from your survey entries.

3. Make money by investing in assembly kits, wherein your finished assembled product would be rejected for false quality reasons without refunding you the money you paid to buy the assembly kit.

4. Investing in false online business guide containing information about starting your own online business but which are all copied from other free articles readily available from the internet.

5. False data entry job where you will end up typing tedious Captcha entries originating from scammers, which are all designed to make it impossible for you to reach an income quota, while benefiting only these scammers for earning from your below quota entries combined with others' below quota entries summed up together to reach the needed quota required by the main originating source.

6. MLM or most commonly known as multi level marketing is obviously more like a pyramid scheme where you are expected to recruit more and more victims to sell useless products or post ads and get paid only after successfully recruiting a new member, and with the promise to earn more as the vicious cycle continues to grow.
   

These are just a few of the many scams out there. While these methods are the most common types as also mentioned in other sources, there are quite a number of newer methods being developed which are all designed to take advantage of your unsuspecting nature, they move on from one strategy to the next, finding out new ways to earn online instead of you earning online, it's always the other way around for scams to work effectively on you.

Whenever you come across a potential work from home job posting that requires you to pay a certain amount of money, then this should be enough proof to distinguish it as a scam. This type of proposition that involves financial transaction in any form of upfront payment in exchange for an opportunity to earn online income should be red-flagged as something not to be taken so lightly which you need to be concerned about.

Before you take the plunge to send money in order to join any potential work from home job postings, always take the time to find out more about the organization behind the proposition. Verify the legitimacy of the organization by asking for their complete contact numbers including fax numbers, since all legitimate business establishments have fax machines, then take note of their country code and area code to determine where they are actually located because some fraudsters may claim to represent any legitimate company with a known address. Another way to find out their location is to track their IP address from their email correspondence with you, there are lots of information on the internet that can teach you how to do this. You can also verify the legitimacy of the organization by entering their website address and other contact information on the directory of the Better Business Bureau Website.

Be very cautious about suspicious proposition, don't get your hopes up too high on the clouds with organizations of questionable reputation, always make it a habit to always be reluctant to close a deal with suspicious organizations. Be suspicious with offers that sounds too good to be true, especially the most obvious and the oldest trick in the book such as promises of instant wealth or the so-called get rich quick schemes. Remember that only facts matter, anything else is a futile waste of time and energy.

The key, of course, for these scammers to succeed is to target the ones who prefers to take the easy way out, because the idea of getting rich quickly is what everyone would want to hear and know more about, so that participating in such a scheme would somehow be more appealing and tempting.

I only hope that the changes to our web experience that the Google panda algorithm update is promising to improve will eventually prove its worth by eradicating the proliferation of scams on the internet for good.

Going back to what was mentioned earlier, the internet is overflowing with lots of articles written about how to earn money online which are all created around the concept of work from home opportunities. Even I myself have written one version of my own although I have chosen mine to focus on legitimate online jobs. The title of my article dedicated entirely to this topic is “Legit Online Jobs or Work from Home Jobs”, kind of common and obvious isn't it, but rest assured that mine was specifically written with care, based on reality and with more emphasis on giving you the best legitimate work from home job information.

How to avoid work from home scams – How to be safe from online work at home scams by ianjonas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.