Scams in India is not a new term to learn but the young aspirants are falling in this new age trap called ‘online jobs’. It is being noticed that several websites are filled with fake but alluring job advertisements where they ask for money and later, they go out of contact leaving the aspirants cheated. After receiving an immense number of complaints, the particular website’s customer care promises to take actions but in reality, the portal remains to be loaded with such job notices. Apart from that, even well known social networking platform’s groups or pages contain fake freelancing and work from home jobs offers.
Most of the time, it becomes difficult for the youth to analyse if the job one is applying for is true or fake as scammers are increasing rapidly with more and more fake opportunities to earn more money within less timeframe are appearing on such job search portals to lure them into the trick. However, in a majority of the cases, it is been observed that the main motive behind these scams is to extract hard-earned money from the candidates and disappear.
Abhinav Shukla, a bank employee recalled an instance stating, “I had heard of such frauds on these websites when one of my friends fell in the trap of one such employer there. While they he didn’t ask any money from her but she wrote content for that person for a month and later, was denied of payment. We failed to track the person and even the platform website tried to get away saying it was the employee’s responsibility to judge the reliability! Through your newspaper, I want to ask, why is it so? If they are running a website and providing a platform to post jobs, they should also be responsible for the same. Such private entities are hand in gloves with those cheaters!”
Another way to loot the candidate, not only youth but also those looking for part time jobs, is by asking for registration and to provide legal documents and personal information including their social security number, credit card information, and bank account information. The information is then used to access your bank account or your credit cards and to steal your identity. At times, they promise to pay a good amount of money and make the employee work but later disappear without any prior guidance.
Bano Bee, a retired employee of the government of Rajasthan expressed his experienced saying, “As per my experience, I can say that these online jobs look alluring but there are so many hidden things which they won’t tell you. When you complete the assignment and send the same, either you may not receive your payments or it may be less what you were promised or they will tell you that there are so many mistakes or the work was not up to the mark, etc. So only go for jobs which are assigned by reputed companies or only if you know the people.”
In today’s time, one must always stay one step ahead and be wise to choose before applying for the jobs in order to avoid from being a scapegoat to such online swindlers. Before providing any information, there must be a check on the company’s website to make sure that the company is secure by looking at its website. Tricksters have also become very crafty these days, which is making it even more difficult to find out whether it is a fake job or a legitimate one. They use the name of prominent organisations. Albeit, it is an open platform for everyone, hence, stringent measures need to be taken to refrain the applicants from such frauds.
Mahashweta Ghosh, a freelancer commented, “I agree that there might be people who got cheated from these websites, but why do expect everything around us to be genuine all the time? We should be careful with our every step and the job market is no exception. At the same time, can’t really blame our youth. Rise in unemployment in the country has made the job seeking youth impatient. These websites must be given strict notice to make their platform fraud-free while my suggestion to the young chaps is that please be smart enough and choose wisely.”
There are several platforms or consumer complaints forum in India to register grievances. Nonetheless, the responses towards the dissatisfaction are given for the namesake and later, no heed is paid to those whines of the beginners aiming to sow their seeds for the success.
