Tai Lam in Science

About three days ago, I was reading federal government online sources about online job scams.

There is resource page from the FTC and another FTC page to report online scams, as well as the the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) page from the FBI.

Conclusion

Most traditional jobs don't advertise on Craigslist. I almost got burned, but luckily I smoked this scam out before I could even apply for it.

The particular one I was looking at struck me as strange, as it has been the only Craigslist posting (of any type) that didn't use Craigslist's prviate e-mail relay/address option. Due to this, I kept looking at the e-mail address (as it was a Yahoo e-mail address, instead of from an official e-mail address from a real American healthcare corporation) until I realized I was looking at a scam — it was very much like looking at a very well camoflauged animal for a long time before spotting it.

An offer that's “too good to be true” doesn't have to be hyperbolically exaggerated to the point of being comical and super obvious — it can also be a toned-down, realistic decoy.

Also, it is a good rule of thumb to cross-reference and check if the same online job listing you've stumbled upon on an aggregate site (such as Craigslist or Indeed) can be found on a better first-party source, such as the company website.