Job seekers urged to be extra vigilant amid scammers

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With the start of the new year, many people will be out job hunting. Already there are a flurry of online job advertisements using government and official business names, many of which turn out to be fake.

Cyber criminals have become more sophisticated, with unsuspecting victims continuing to fall for their tricks. Cyber security experts have warned job seekers to be extra vigilant, when responding to job advertisements.

Teras Maite Nghamuni, the owner of Kombat Security Services, has been fielding calls from people saying they paid a certain individual money in exchange for a job at her security company.

“One particular person called me saying they paid this particular person money, and they were asking to see when can they actually start the job and it turned out that we didn’t know of any open vacancies and the person disappeared. So it’s quite a number of people that applied for jobs and they paid this particular person money, R300 to be specific and the person disappeared.”

The Basic Education Department, Stats SA and the City of Ekurhuleni municipality have had to explain and dismiss as fake news social media posting that they were hiring.

City of Ekurhuleni metro spokesperson, Zweli Dlamini explains: “The city never advertises positions on social media. Any position that is advertised on social media is actually fake, that is a job scam, and people must be vigilant around that particular issue. So we do appeal, once again, to the people of Ekurhuleni and any other person for that matter, to say if you find a job advert that is done through social media please ignore. It is not legitimate, it is fake and you’re going to be scammed of your money.”

International Cyber Security Expert, Andy Mashaile, says internet users must remain vigilant all the times.

“The applications for the job scams that are going through internationally as well as in South Africa, because you and I know that cyber crime is a transnational crime, so what happens overseas or in other parts of the world will be mirrored here in South Africa; because the cyber criminals sort of work hand in glove from a modus operandi point of view. What are the tell tale signs? When a job scam requires for your personal information, meaning your ID number, your home address and many of those things. You need to be extra vigilant and extra careful. The second tale sign would be your bank details would be requested upfront, and the third one would be the communication regarding the job only being on your social media apps.”

Online job seekers are advised to look out for spelling and grammatical errors on job posts and never send money to recruiters in advance.

Spotlight on spate of fake job adverts: 

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