OfferSentry

OfferSentry learning center

Job Scams: Warning Signs, Examples and Safety Tools

Understand the tactics behind fake recruiters, fraudulent checks, messaging-app offers, and other job scams before they cost you money or personal information.

Check a suspicious message Verify a recruiter

Practical safety resources

Latest guides

Each guide explains how a scam works, the warning signs to recognize, and the steps to take if you have already responded.

Free OfferSentry tools

Check before you respond

Use our browser-based tools as a first screening step, then verify the employer independently.

Job-offer message checker

Paste a recruiter message or job offer to review it for common scam patterns. The text stays inside your browser.

Check the message

Recruiter and domain checker

Compare the recruiter’s email, company website, and job-posting URL for mismatches and lookalike-domain warning signs.

Compare the domains

Domain age and registration checker

Check a website’s public registration date, approximate age, registrar, expiration information, nameservers, and MX mail records.

Check a domain

Job scam evidence and report builder

Organize recruiter details, suspicious messages, payments, warning signs, and preserved evidence into a private incident summary.

Build an incident summary

Job scam safety checklist

Review 24 warning signs involving recruiter identities, interviews, payments, personal information, equipment, and company verification.

Review the safety checklist

Three rules that stop many job scams

1

Verify independently

Find the company’s official website yourself and confirm both the position and recruiter through a separate contact method.

2

Never pay to get paid

Do not send money, deposit checks for equipment, buy gift cards, or purchase cryptocurrency to receive a job or earnings.

3

Protect sensitive information

Do not provide banking details, passwords, verification codes, or a Social Security number to an unverified recruiter.

Think you encountered a job scam?

Save the messages, email addresses, telephone numbers, links, offer letters, and payment instructions before blocking the sender.

Report it to the FTC ↗