What Happens When You Don't Play it Smart with Work from Home Opportunities

Because there are so many legitimate work from home opportunities out there, it's unfortunate that there is a tendency for individuals to look at work from home jobs with a suspicious eye. However, when things like this happen, it's definitely no wonder. 

When looking for that perfect work from home opportunity, it's very necessary to always do your research and protect yourself. Don't depend on anybody else to do it. You are responsible for you!

• DO YOUR RESEARCH—know who you are dealing with. Get references from others who have worked for the company! One of the biggest scams is to not employ you—only to sell you "training materials" or help find others to rip off.
• Forget the big profits or overnight millions. A work from home opportunity is like any other job or business. If you're serious, you'll start from the bottom and dedicate yourself to success.
• Unsolicited emails for work from home opportunities are typically scams. Regular employers don't go around knocking on doors to find out who needs a job, now do they?
• Get all the details before you pay. Any company offering a legitimate work from home opportunity will offer all the information you need freely before requiring you to purchase any equipment! Know the refund policy! And never pay anyone just for the opportunity to work for them!  
• Stay away from those offering advances in pay. You get the check, deposit it and are then told you've been given the wrong amount and to return a portion of the payment. Then you'll find out the check was fake and YOU are on the line for the money.

And when you do find the perfect work from home opportunity, it's very important not to mess it up, like this guy did!

Nailed by a Work from Home Scam? Who Me?

Article first published as Nailed by a Work from Home Scam? Who Me? on Technorati.


Work from home scams are definitely out there and most people don't want to admit it once they have been taken for a ride. If you've never been scammed, well, it's likely because you either really haven't-- or you're in major denial. They say the first step to healing is admitting the truth, learning from your mistakes and getting back in the search for legitimate online employment.

So let's do this together, shall we? Let's admit the reasons you got taken by work from home scams.

You didn't do your research. You jumped right into the work from home job hunt without any information whatsoever as to what's available and what will realistically get you where you want to be. You jumped on the first bright sparkly ad that promised you could make thousands of dollars overnight by only working a few hours a day. You got greedy. You got dollar signs in your eyes. So when you were asked for forty or fifty bucks for the privilege of working from home, it didn't seem so bad. After all, you'd make that back tenfold by next Tuesday, right?

If you had done your research into work from home opportunities, you would have learned the number one rule: no legitimate home-based job requires you to pay for the opportunity to work from home.

You were lazy. You decided to take a shortcut. Instead of investigating work from home job opportunities on your own, you decided to pay someone who had already done the work. You paid for a laundry list or membership to a site claiming to have secret knowledge of all the best work from home jobs on the internet. However, what you really got was a list of old, outdated prospects or a webpage filled with broken links.

The painful truth is any information you might want or need about online work from home jobs are freely listed on the internet. All you have to do is look. Sure, it may not all be in one place and it may take some time and effort-- but so does any job search.

You didn't research the company offering you a job. You got so excited at finding an online job with stellar benefits that you handed over all your personal information right away. Within a month, the feds were knocking on your door and wanting to hold you responsible for bank fraud when really you were just the victim of identity theft. 

Now you know internet thieves are extremely sophisticated and can create convincing 'here today, gone tomorrow' websites in the blink of an eye. Next time, stop to research all potential job offers and the companies they come from. Make phone calls. When it comes to work from home jobs, you won't regret being careful.

You're Too Smart for Work from Home Online Scams. Right?

You already know work from home online scams are out there. You know that those ads and listings that catch your attention with promises of making you an overnight millionaire can’t possibly be legitimate. That’s obvious. However, what’s important to understand is that those listings are the work of amateurs. There are scammers out there that are so sophisticated that many times, law enforcement agencies have a hard time keeping up with them. More often than not, it’s not even known which websites are work from home scams until the scammers are long gone with people’s money or sensitive financial information.

While it is true that there are task forces designed to spot and catch those posting work from home online scams, it is often a cat and mouse game as scammers become more and more refined at thwarting the measures of law enforcement agencies. Since work from homes scams tend to stay one step ahead of the law, the best way to make sure you don’t get taken in by bogus work from home opportunities is to get educated on the subject-and stay that way. Remember, the reason these guys don’t get caught is because they consistently change their modus operandi.

Most work from home online scams tend to be successful because they are so elaborate. Not only will they set up an intricate website using names and symbols similar to established and respected companies; they will sometimes even provide an address or a fake 1-800 number manned by a mock customer support specialist. This is because they know that there will be those looking to confirm that they are a legitimate business. If they are able to fool potential victims, it means that they can set up shop just a while longer. If not, they can shut down and start up a whole new scheme within a record period of time.

So how in the world will you ever be able to tell these work from home online scams from legitimate work from home opportunities? Simple. Money will always be of issue. If it is not money, then it will be your personal information such as bank account information or your social security number. Aside from work from home customer service jobs where you may have to buy a special type of headset, a legitimate work from home company does not and will not require you to pay them for the opportunity to work.

Some work from home online scams will ask for your bank account or Social Security number, saying that they are going to send you a payment. Then they say that they overpaid you and that you are to keep part of the payment and send the rest back. The money that they wire or send in a money order is either stolen or fake. This leaves you to pay back the bank and deal with fraud charges.

There are many good work from home companies that are given a bad name thanks to these work from home online scams but with a discerning eye it will be quite easy to keep these types of situations out of your lap.