Fake job sites that take your money, credit card details

Scam artists and crooks are creating very professional looking websites that are being used to advertise fake job openings in high visibility companies and government organizations in the region.

The objective of these websites is to have the unsuspecting mostly expatriate job-seekers register and enter their credit card numbers for a processing fee.

These sites have implemented excellent search engine optimization and have a lot of relevant keywords and content, so that they get top positioning when someone searches for jobs online.

Many times they are placed much higher in search engine ranking than the actual company’s career page. This adds to the believability factor in the eyes of the job-seeker. These activities not only defraud the job-seekers but also damage the brand value of the organization.

Managed BrandHawk Alpha social media and online threat assessment service was recently used to find these fraudulent websites for a high visibility government organization in Dubai.

The system was used to conduct a comprehensive search of the online domain space, using parameters that were developed in a joint partnership with the IT and marketing department of the organization.

The system tapped into the leading search engines as well as its internal search algorithms to find several sites that had fake job postings.

These sites were designed using themes and looked very convincing. They asked the job-seeker to register with their credit card and pay a Dh150 to 500 registration fee.

This way the person looking for a job not only lost their money but also ended up giving their credit card number to the scammer.

Once these sites were discovered the entities involved proceeded to work with the domain hosting companies, ISPs and domain registrars to take down these fraudulent sites, thereby saving the public from loss and protecting the brand reputation of the organization.

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