How to Avoid Scams When Working Online
Working from home can be a very alluring prospect to a lot of people. But there are many different scams out there that promise big pay rewards for a short work day. People have fallen for these scams and end up losing more money than they make. Fortunately, there are ways of telling scams from genuine offers in many cases.
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Instructions
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Find an interesting offer from a work-from-home company. You may find a few in most newspapers, and there are likely thousands online in various guises. At this stage, don't sign up for anything.
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Assess the offer. See what the offer is asking of people, and if this isn't readily apparent, then the advertisement may be a scam. Genuine offers should be clear and transparent up front. Scams that attempt to draw people in are often vague and ambiguous until they have you signed up and or they request payment upfront.
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Check the pay scale versus the work. Often, online scams trick people by claiming that they will pay ridiculous amounts for something that anyone could do. For example, a site offers to pay hundreds of dollars for simple actions such as reading emails or filling out surveys. Somewhere in the fine print it is revealed that you need to reach an unreachable amount before the site will pay you, rendering the entire process useless to you. By the point people realize they can't make money, they have already done some free work for the company. They then abandon their account, which is how the scam operates.
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Check the reputation of the company. Established scams, such as the ones advertised late night on television, already have public detractors somewhere. Check online for what people think of the company to determine whether an offer is genuine or not. If the reviews are overwhelmingly bad, the company is almost certainly a scam and isn't worth getting involved with.
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Don't pay to work. If the company or offer requires some kind of investment or purchase before you can make any money, it is probably a scam. Along with pay to work are investment "opportunities." There are investment opportunities that you can make money from, but the genuine ones shouldn't feature slogans like ''three easy payments.''
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Notice the font style, if there are a lot of typographical errors, a lot of boldface and capital letters and if the site overuses exclamation points. Katie Lindendoll explains on the "Early Show" on CBS News that unprofessional ads frequently use the Comic Sans font as well.
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References
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