We Don't Need No Online Scams

Are online universities the real deal? What about online job offers? What are the red flags of a scam? Tune in and learn more with Jonathan and Lauren.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hey there, everybody, welcome to tech
Stuff where we're gonna school you. I'm Jonathan Strict and
I'm Lauren vocal Bomb. Today we're gonna school you where
we are talking about online universities and jobs and the

(00:27):
kind of the kind of tangled web they weave that.
You know, there's there's a lot of scams out there,
there's a lot of terrific benefits as well. Yeah, there's
a lot of There's a lot of information to sift through,
and some of it is misinformation. So consider this episode
sort of a cautionary tale some some tips that you
can follow to really kind of make sure that the

(00:48):
information you're getting is the most accurate and is going
to be the most advantageous to you. And also keep
in mind that if you're listening to this episode in
things probably changed a little bit aborted it. The Internet
is likely to have changed since then, but that's one
of those things. We're in this sort of transitory period where, uh,
you know, business adopted the Internet very quickly, right, didn't

(01:12):
necessarily do it the right way when it first started.
That's when we saw that dot Com bubble burst. But they,
you know, business has kind of figured out how they
could leverage the Internet in a way that made sense,
that that bolstered their business and wasn't just like, oh, well,
we have to have a web presence because that's a thing, right, right,
But they really had the resources to do so at
the time, right. And And it's kind of interesting because

(01:35):
if you think about the Internet started off as an
academic uh thing, I mean our bonnet. The predecessor to
the Internet was connection between computers in uh in in universities. So, um,
the education and the Internet have had a link in
a for a really long time. But being able to
use the Internet formally in order to get an education

(01:59):
in the sense of what we think about when you
attend a brick and mortar university, that's a newer idea
and in some cases, uh, it can be a little treacherous.
So that's why we wanted to talk about. So Lauren,
you know, I know you looked a lot into the
online education side. I looked a lot into the online
jobs side. So this this episode is gonna be a
little different than the way some of our previous episodes

(02:21):
have been. Jonathan is going to be talking not to
the entire time for for nearly fifty of the episode. Yeah,
don't crazy, Frankly, I don't know what I'm gonna do
with myself. But actually I do know what I'm gonna do.
I'm gonna be asking you some questions, Lauren. He also
brought some knitting. I did, uh, And let me tell you,
my pearling has become phenomenal. And you knitters out there

(02:43):
know that I know what I'm talking about. That size
eight needles, people, size eight circle needles. So you know
what are you? Pearling? Isn't just a computer pun? Also
a computer pun? All right? So, now that we've got
the knitting and computer computer language jokes of the wait,
let's actually look at the state of affairs and online education. So,

(03:05):
first of all, Lauren, do you have anything about the
trend in online courses? Right? So, according to a study
done by the Sloan Consortium, which, to be fair, promotes
online education. They but however, they did the study in
twelve that found that students taking at least one course
online numbered above six point seven million in the U

(03:26):
s alone. All Right, so that's a lot of people,
and and I'm sure that a lot of this is
students who are in fact attending a brick and mortar
school and taking one specific course online. However, this is
a trend that's been growing since the early two thousands,
when universities began offering these online programs, and it became
a little bit, like you said earlier, treacherous because as

(03:49):
of as of two thousand and eight, a study found
that there were a hundred and sixty eight accredited graduate
business schools and a two hundred and twelve fake ones.
So there are these fake schools out there that people
could end up sending money to or enrolling in some way.
And you know, we also should say, like, there's there's
another term for online courses of people call it distance learning.

(04:11):
The the idea that you are are essentially logging into
some sort of um educational resource and you are not
physically attending that university. So let me ask, what are
some of that you know, you talked about a fake
business school, what are some of the dangers associated with
this online coursework trend. Well, um, they're they're called diploma

(04:33):
mills because the general process of this is that you
pay them for a diploma. You might take a test,
you might take a tiny bit of course work, probably not,
and they just mill you a diploma and go, congratulations,
you're a doctor. So this is kind of the educational
counterpart to the Universal Life Church online, that resource where
you go, you fill out a form and magically you're ordained. Right, sure,

(04:55):
except for the fact that you can when when you're
ordained by the Universal Life Church, that can be a
legal document that you can use. The educational degrees degrees
is in little floating quote marks in the air are
not always accredited, right, So they're they're not true credentials, correct,
there they are fake credentials from a fake university frequently

(05:17):
that has some kind of crazy offshore account and exists
only to take your money and or to provide other
scammers with with the method of getting a job that
they don't necessarily deserve. Okay, So so there's there's two
sides to this coin. Really there's there There are people
who are dishonest people who are using these services to
obtain fake credentials, and honest people who are being taken in,

(05:40):
people who who legitimately want to pursue an education and
potentially a career in a specific field. But really all
they're doing is handing money over and getting a sheet
of paper that says here's your that's completely worthless. And
when you end up taking that too, you know, if
you get high school diploma this way and you take
it to a university, the university is going to say, like,
that is not really a diploma. You cannot go here

(06:03):
or or to an employer, and the employer says the
same thing. Because there are lots of resources where people
can check this sort of thing out. Yeah, so that's
that's scary stuff. I mean, and it's kind of crazy
to me because I think this is just it's a
weird middleman, because you would think if you're trying to
scam people, you could just print up your own I
guess you would technically be on like some some fake

(06:25):
schools enrollment form, but you would And and that's the
thing that part of the service that these that these
scammers provide is that you know, they'll they'll have a
phone system that you know, that an employer could call
into and if they don't really do their research, if
they just call this phone number, then they would say, yes,
this person totally went here is this super accredited school.
Thank you? Um, and so so do you have any

(06:47):
examples of some of these crazy things that have happened
with Yeah, there's some terrible, terrible horror stories from from
the news. You can you can look them up and
they're they're really sensational and wonderful. A lot of a
lot of websites very much enjoyed, I think covering these
sorts of things. Back in back in two thousand one,
UM one Gregory Kaplinger claimed that he had a medical

(07:08):
degree and got a whole bunch of not just patients
but also investors on board with this AIDS and cancer
treatment gosh research that he was claiming to do. UM
wound up being ordered to pay more than a million
dollars in restitution. Thank goodness. Yeah, oh no, no, I mean,
I mean, you know his uh because because as it
turned out, he his medical degree was from the Metropolitan

(07:32):
Collegiate Institute in Great Britain, which he paid a hundred
dollars for a diploma from. So, I mean, think about
this for a second. Guys. We're talking about someone who
was taking advantage of people who are, by the very
nature of the disease that they or a loved one has,
are an incredibly emotionally vulnerable state. And uh, that's also

(07:54):
going to come into play when I talk in my
section about online jobs. Um. I get really be angry
about a few things, and this is one of those
things that I get exceptionally angry about is the taking
advantage of people who are at their lowest point when
it comes to their emotional vulnerability, and anyone who is

(08:14):
willing to catalyze on that, I just I can't. I
can't fathom that level of disregard for someone else's you know,
well being. Yeah, this was one of the stories. This
is one of the episodes in doing the research for it.
Every time that I would come to the examples portion
of any of these articles, I would have to brace myself.
I drank a lot of coffee today and kind of

(08:36):
to to bolster my own you gotta you gotta muscle through. Yeah. Well,
I've decided to get off my soapbox until the second
half of the show, So pray continue excellent. Um. So
you know he was brought to justice, which is wonderful.
Um On on the other end of it, um Uh,
there there are stories about you know, people who who

(09:00):
we're nurses, who had never gotten their high school degree
because they had dropped out for for very very visceral
personal life reasons, who decided to pay two dollars or
four dollars for a degree that they really thought was
going to advance their life. UM to institutions like for
for example, and I haven't I haven't UM confirmed whether

(09:23):
or not these are still an operation, but some names
that were floating around UH a few years back include
Belford University, Jefferson High School Online, um vents or high
School Online and these these places, you know, again, would
would take your money, shift you a diploma, give you
a very basic online test, usually UM claiming that you

(09:44):
could use your life experience on a multiple choice test
that you could go back and and if you've got
an answer wrong, it would let you go back and
try again, and give you a hint gosh, saying that
somehow that's the equivalent of the actual educational process, right UM,
and then send you a diploma and and yeah, these
people were these people were taken in and before you know,

(10:05):
they just wanted it so badly that that they were
willing to believe in this process because they, you know,
they needed something to be easy, right Yeah. And again
that's another one of those things it's true on the
online jobs as well, very much so. Is that it's
that old saying that we've it's become a cliche, but
it is still true. If it sounds too good to
be true, it probably is. So if someone tells you that, hey,

(10:30):
you know, taking this one little online test is equivalent
to finishing out your high school years after you dropped out,
that's just not true. For one thing, you don't have
that experience of all the pep rallies that's all important,
all important pepper rillies. There were a lot of pep
rallies when I was in high school. I went to
way too many pepper rillies. I was not very peppy,

(10:50):
so it didn't speak to me. I'm pretty sure I
was covering them for for my yearbook, so so I
could kind of Daria over in the corner with of course,
I was on the yearbook with my camera and kind
of be very loose from above the entire thing. But
this is all but so, you know, I think things
to watch out for in these kind of things are
are you know, A lot of these places are registered
through a service like domains by Proxy, which allows which

(11:12):
is a service that allows the original registrant of a
URL to hide who they are. Ye, so if you
do a who is look up on this, you're not
going to find a whole lot of information, exactly. It's
not a great sign. Never a good sign for anything, honestly,
not only online education. I mean, unless you're looking for
some sort of proxy server. Uh that's probably not a

(11:34):
great sign. Yeah, not not a good sign of trustworthiness. Um,
most of their physical addresses are outside of the US
or you know, your home country of choice and uh
so which which especially? I mean the US educational system
is a strange thing because it does not directly give
credit to colleges and universities as being legitimate. But there

(11:56):
are a lot of a lot of smaller regional UM
body that it does recognize as being official creditors. Gotcha.
So there's not like a centralized authority that is the
gives the stamp of approval or disapproval. Right but in
but in any case, um, if you are talking about
an online university that claims to be giving us credit

(12:18):
or claims to to have to be in the registry
to give us credit, and its main office is outside
of the US, that is a big warning sign. And
all of these things kind of also tie into concerns
in the educational system about for profit colleges. Okay, yeah,
I've seen commercials for these, right, I've I've seen commercials

(12:39):
on uh television. I've seen ads on like the public
transportation system here in Atlanta. Yeah, places like University of Phoenix. Yeah,
that's the one that always I always see. And uh
so these are these are for profit colleges, right, right,
as opposed to public schools or or even or even
you know, private schools that are nonetheless educational institutions. Right.

(13:03):
So this, this is this is more of a kind
of a privatized, for profit approach as far as educating
people goes. Honestly, I don't know very much about it.
What can you tell me about these? Well? Okay, so,
so it's not that it's not that they're not educational institutions.
They do provide a rigorous coursework um through which you

(13:25):
can earn a degree um which will, depending on the case,
be accepted by other educational institutions and employers. I see.
So if you were to go to some of these, uh,
depending on the case, you might be able to, let's say,
spend a year taking university of Phoenix courses and then
maybe transfer into another school. And depending upon this relationship,

(13:49):
those credits could be accepted as UH as transfer credits.
They they could be Yes, sometimes it depends, It depends
on the school they're they're generally looked on, looked upon
as being less desirable than an education from a nonprofit
college Brick and Water College. Yes, UM, they're Also they
tend to be more expensive. There was this terrific study

(14:12):
that was done by the US Government Accountability Office back
in UM in which they sent undercover applicants to fifteen
four profit colleges and UM in terms of expenses, for example,
a student who was interested in massage therapy, UH not
not you know, an incredibly rigorous four year plan, but

(14:33):
but just a certificate would have cost fourteen thousand dollars
at a four profit college and the same certificate from
a local community college would have cost five and twenty bucks.
That that is incredible, And it would have cost a
tiny bit more from a from a private school. However,
not that much, I mean within the same range. UM.

(14:53):
That kind of that kind of shenanigans. And also they
found that UM four of the colleges UH own write
encouraged fraudulent practices. Uh, it encouraged applicants to lie in
order to get federal aid. Um. And all fifteen made
deceptive or otherwise questionable statements to these undercover applicants. Yum,

(15:13):
that's that is not that's not a ringing endorsement. It's not.
I mean, stuff like like staff would tell the applicants, um,
what would inform the applicants that they would be attending
twelve month year classes, you know, you know, classes every
month of the year, um, but would state the costs
for attendance for only nine months um in order to

(15:35):
mislead them about the amount of money that they would
be spending. And so you would have a three month
surcharge added on top. Yikes. Yeah, it's just I mean,
you know, and this is kind of phat logic. It's
just if you're not paying direct attention, right, if you
don't know that lying to you, if you don't ask
the right questions, it's just like the genie. If you
don't frame the wish just right, you're gonna get the

(15:58):
worst end of that deal. Yeah, and uh, and other
stuff like um. Once once applicants, these these undercover applicants
had registered with websites that are designed to link for
profit colleges with prospective students. UM. They began receiving phone
calls within five minutes UM. One of them received more
than a hundred and eighty phone calls in a month UM,

(16:20):
some after eleven PM. So they were essentially getting harassed. Yeah,
and and just you know, just not not good stuff.
And especially since enrollment in these for profit colleges had
grown from about three hundred sixty five thousand students to
almost one point eight million in several years leading up
to the study in two, it was something that the

(16:40):
government was very concerned about in terms of just what
kind of quality of education these students were getting and
how they were being treated, and whether or not it
was it was worth their time or money at all. UM.
I read another interesting article one that you sent me actually, Jonathan,
about a students experience experience at the University of Phoenix
and um and and it and it didn't seem positive.

(17:02):
Now to be fair, of this person who went through
the University of Phoenix program had already achieved her degree
and then some right she she had already taught in
creative writing, which was her field, and she went through
this degree, it sounded like, um, mostly to get more
more computer experience. Since it was an online course, it

(17:23):
seems like that was mostly her goal, and I think
that she achieved that goal, um, but she just didn't.
I didn't have the feeling that someone who was going
through it for the creative writing experience would have gotten
much of anything. To be fair, we should also say
that she expressed on the very outset that she had
a little bit of a bias against online learning and

(17:45):
that she felt that it's really hard to replace the
experience of being face to face with professors and other
students in a traditional learning environment. So let's you know,
she definitely did have already a kind of a preconceived idea.
Now whether or not that was based in uh, you know,
in fact or just her her her own personal I

(18:07):
think that it was very much based in her own
personal information. Because there was a study done in two
thousand nine by s r I International for the Department
of Education that found that on average, online students performed
better than face to face students in quantitative studies of
both K through twelve and college education course. That's pretty incredible.

(18:28):
I mean that that tells a very strong story right there. So, um,
all right, so we've got we've got the quality of
the education itself seems to be pretty uh pretty rigorous,
Like it's pretty good quality of the education for at
least at least some of these schools. Well well this
this isn't necessarily talking about those for profit colleges, but
but but for online education in general, Um, we want

(18:51):
to make it really clear that if the online education
is through a good school, then it's probably fine. I mean,
there there are plenty of completely a gentimate universities. Um
Duke University has an MBA program for people all over
the world who you never have to set foot into school,
and it is it is very prestigious. And and then
there's also I mean this isn't for college credit, but

(19:13):
there are also lots of resources out there where if
you want to take a class from m i T,
you can get access to all the coursework, you can
get access to the lectures, you can follow courses that
are taught at m I T and other other colleges
as well. I'm just using m i T as an
example because I've actually used that. I've used chemistry courses
in m I T to help get a better understanding
of chemistry. And obviously I'm not getting any sort of

(19:36):
credit towards that. I'm not going to get a degree
in chemistry from m I T because I'm doing this,
but I get the benefit of that information and the expertise. Yeah,
this is called continuing education and UM, and it's a wonderful,
wonderful thing that is harder to scam people on because
you're not paying any money on the outset, right, Yeah,
it tends to be like M I T. Stuff is free,
so most most universities, well that is that is a

(19:58):
really good If you are just doing continuing education, you
should probably not have to pay for that unless you
are actually going into a brick and mortar right right, right, yeah,
if you're actually paying for the facilities and the textbooks
and all that kind of stuff. Right. Um. But so
if if you are trying to look for UM for
online education you're wondering whether it's legitimate or not, there

(20:20):
are a few really great resources that you can go to. UM.
First is to just search with the Better Business Bureau UM,
which is at www dot BBB dot org UM, and uh,
just just type a name. There's a lot of information
out there about a lot of these scammers that we
were talking about. Keeping in mind that this is all
based on what people have reported. There's it's not like

(20:40):
it's a governmental agency. It's not no no, but um,
but you know other people have had problems with this
particular school, then that's probably a red flag. UM. You
can also go to UM O, P E dot E
D dot gov slash accreditation UM and UH and use
that to see whether this is a federal government website,

(21:02):
a Department of Education website that's going to list all
of the all of the various accreditation bodies report into
it about the schools that they have accredited, and so
so this is a database of right. So if if
the school you're looking at is non that list, that's
a huge red flag. That is a huge red flag.
Even if the school is on the list. Um. You

(21:24):
you know, just just kind of kind of think ahead,
think as far ahead as possible. Try to check with
other people in the industry, Check with the universities that
you might want to pursue graduate graduate degree from, and
and check and make sure that your class work is
going to transfer. It will not always and and I've
you know, I think everyone knows someone who's had that problem,
and it is um Also internationally, you can check with

(21:47):
the Council for Higher Education Accreditation at www dot c
h e A dot org. Awesome. So those are some
great resources that people can use so that they can
make sure that the money that they are going to
dedicate towards their education actually goes to a legitimate education.
Otherwise you'd get an education and totally the wrong way.

(22:09):
It's that's the school of hard nuts, is what we
call that one. All right, Well, we're gonna start talking
about jobs, but before we do, let's take a quick break.
All right, So we've covered the education part of this conversation.
Now let's talk about jobs. There's so much information out there,
not only about jobs that you can find online, but

(22:31):
jobs that you can perform through teleworking online. Uh, and
also just information about jobs in general. And before I
get into the various kind of things you need to
look out for, I thought to talk a little bit
about some some interesting statistics I found. Right, because we're
living more of our lives online and so chances are
if you're applying for jobs, part of that process, yeah, yeah,

(22:54):
part of that process is a this vetting process. That
people will give you the job applicant That can sometimes
prevent you from landing that gig you one into land.
So so let's say that I'm applying for a position
here at How Stuff Works. Turns out the people at
how Stuff Works, or what I like to call web savvy,

(23:16):
I can't imagine. Yeah, so one of the things they
might do, and by might, I mean one of the
things I'm sure they do, assuming you've gotten far enough
into the process, so your resume matches up what they
are looking for, and your cover letter doesn't have incredible
grammatical errors in that um and you've you've followed all

(23:37):
the instructions. By the way, if you ever do want
to apply for a job at How Stuff Works, follow
the instructions. We know the person who looks at those
and the there's a very easy first step. If it
doesn't follow the instructions, it doesn't go into a file,
It goes into the trash can. So anyway you follow
the instructions, what happens then well, they may be checking

(23:59):
up on you on your various social networks. You know,
if they'll they'll take a look and see to make
sure that the person who is living their life is
the same one who is represented on paper exactly. So.
A study commissioned by Microsoft called the Online Reputation in
a Connected World discovered that about seventy of the employers

(24:22):
or seventy employers who were who were surveyed conduct an
online search of all applicants, said they had turned down
applicants by what they found online, but only seven percent
of job applicants were concerned about their online reputations. That's
a huge disconnect. Wow, Yeah, I'm that's that's something. I mean, personally,

(24:42):
I'm very concerned about I always I because I comment
on them. Also, well, I mean, you know, just I
I feel like it's I guess it's not common sense,
but I you know, I try to really lock down
my online presence and never say anything in public um
that I wouldn't want the public to hear. Yeah. I
try to do the same thing, and most of the
time it works, except when I get friends who decided
to share stuff that wasn't meant for the general public.

(25:04):
You know who you are anyway. Some of the reasons
why the these employers did turn down applicants included things
like inappropriate comments by the candidate on their social profiles,
unsuitable photos and videos, criticisms of previous employers. That's a
huge no note. Oh yeah, yeah, be very careful about that. Always,

(25:26):
always be very very polite whoever you're working for. Use
your filters if you are going to use your filters,
and don't post to any kind of public forum if
you are going to grouse. I know that venting is important,
so I'm not saying don't do it, just be smart
about it. Also if you were to criticize former co
workers or clients. And also they found that even sometimes

(25:49):
inappropriate comments left by friends and relatives of the person
were enough for a company to turn that personal, which
is that's really rough, right because I don't know about you,
but I've got a couple of jerk relatives who might
leave a comment. If you have a public post and
someone just comes in there, and yeah, I don't have
any control over them. I guess I could delete their comments,

(26:09):
which or you could make the post and not public
in general. But yeah, but I'm a public kind of guy.
I like my laundry out there where everyone can see. Anyway,
those are some statistics that I thought are interesting, so
that that's just a good rule of thumb. For anybody
who is in the job market, just know that you're
in mind that that if you can google yourself, your
employer can do the exact same thing. Yeah, so you

(26:31):
want to make sure that that the stuff that your
employer sees is going to have be a good representation
of who you are. And it's not saying that you
can't go out and have fun, you can't be smart
about it. Yeah. So now let's move on really to
some of the the nastier scams that are out there,
because there are a lot. So again, like we were
saying in the top of the show, people who have

(26:54):
like and we were talking about the people who were
buying into that fake doctor who was saying that he
was working towards cures, AIDS and cancer things like that,
they're very, very vulnerable emotionally. Same thing is true for
people who are seeking jobs. They whether it's your first
job and you're you're just unsure because you're entering into
a brand new world that you just don't have experience,

(27:14):
and so it's yeah, it can be terrifying. Or you're
someone who I've been in this experience, you're someone who
worked for a company for years and years and years
and then suddenly found yourself back in the job market
and it had been years since you had to deal
with that. Heck, when I got a job, the Internet
was barely a thing. So um, you know that there

(27:35):
are there are reasons why people are very vulnerable at
this period, and so that makes that that just opens
up the doors for yeah. Unfortunately, because people who scam
don't really care that the people that they're hurting are vulnerable.
In fact, they counting exactly. So one of the most
uh well known scams out there is often referred to

(27:57):
as payment forwarding or payment hands for scams. So the
scam works this way. First of all, you get let's
say that you have put your resume up on a
couple of job posting sites. So there are plenty of
them out there. Some of them tend to be more

(28:17):
rife with rep scallions than others. Sure, but you know,
in any in any forum in which you're posting your
profile publicly, you're going to get attention from yeah, from
people who think they can take advantage of you, as
well as people who may legitimately have something for you.
I will say this, though, I think that the success
rate of just posting your resume and then getting an

(28:38):
opportunity is really low. That's like, we didn't we didn't
pull statistics on this, and I've heard numbers ranging all
over the place, but I but I believe it's less
than ten percent of people. I've heard the number I
saw most frequently, although I was trying to find a
very reputable source that could tell me. But the number
I saw us eight percent, which I don't have trouble believing.
But because I could not find a rep source, that

(29:01):
may not be accurate. I will say that I did
find my very first job from an online job posting,
but all of my but all of my jobs after
that have come through networking. Networking. Yeah, well, but your
online job posting, were you responding to a job that
had been posted? See, that's different than someone hadn't contacted. Okay, right,
so so payment forwarding tends to be that other way around. Right,

(29:23):
It's not that you are responding to a job posting.
It's that someone has seen that you've posted your resume
and they contact you, and they may contact you about
a position. Uh, saying that this is an amazing opportunity.
You're going to be able to make lots of money.
Per month and you're gonna be able to work from home,
and there's like there's it's just there's nothing to the job.
It's just this is an opening and you're the perfect

(29:45):
person and the stars have aligned. All of this should
be a red flag to you, because again, if anything
is too easy, if it seems too good to be true,
it probably is. So uh, here's how the scam works.
The scammer convinces the victim to hand over information that
usually includes a banking their bank account number. Uh. And

(30:07):
they don't just clean out the scan the victim. That
would that would be a scam. That would be pretty
easy to to, you know, trace back, and that would
be a big problem for the scammer. Now. Instead, what
they do is they might tell the victim like, oh,
we need your bank account number because you're gonna get
paid and direct deposit and that's the only way we
pay you. That's also another red flag. By the way,

(30:27):
if the employer says we only pay out by direct deposit,
that's a red flag unless it's a government agency and
you are absolutely sure it's a legitimate government agency, because
a lot in the US only pay for direct product Alright,
So then they've got your bank account number. What they
then do, well, they'll transfer money into your account and
your job is to then wire that money to some

(30:52):
other account, which is usually an offshore account, and as
part of that transaction, you get to keep a certain
percentage of the money that was transferred into your account.
But here's the problem. That money is from some form
of illegal activity, possibly stolen outright. So really what that
victim is doing is they are committing theft and wire

(31:13):
fraud because they've been tricked into being part of this.
And the reason why it's done this way is so
that if the law enforcement officials start to track the activity,
they come after the victim. They're not coming after the
scammer because the scammer has distanced him or herself away
by at least one degree of separation by putting the
victim as the the fall guy. So the victim is,

(31:36):
as far as they know, doing something perfectly legitimate. They're
just moving money around. But if you ask yourself the
question like why the why do they need me to
do this? Why can't they just do this themselves and
then save the money on that transaction fee? Why would
they need me to do it? Then it all starts
to fall. Yeah, it's illegal, and they don't want to
get caught. They want you to get caught. Here's some
general rules. Okay, so you should not give out your

(31:58):
personal bank account or PayPal account or credit card numbers
to an employer potential employer, especially not before you have
already received the job, right. Yeah, And don't agree to
have any funds or paychecks direct deposited to any of
your accounts by a brand new employer, particularly if they
say that's the only way that they give out payment. That's,
like I said, a huge red flag. Uh. The US

(32:18):
government being an exception, assuming that you can verify that
it's a legitimate office, because there are scammers who will
pose as you know, legitimate business, but if you are
to really examine them, you realize this guy is not
on the op and up. Make sure that there's a
phone number you can call it goes to an actual person.
Make sure that the email has an actual registered domain
that goes to whatever the organization is and it's not

(32:41):
hotmail dot com or Yahoo dot com or unless unless
you're applying for Yahoo, in which case a right. Even
though those corporate uh emails will be different from just
that anyway, so be careful, it's what we're saying. Also,
don't forward, transfer or wire money to an employer, Like
if part of the job involves you buying into the

(33:01):
employer first, that's a huge red flag. And uh, don't
transfer money and retain a portion for payment because you're
probably receiving stolen goods stolen money. Uh, and use critical thinking.
Any legitimate business that would have an employee wire money
to some of their account would first conduct a really
thorough background check on that person. I mean, you are
essentially entrusting that person to send large amounts of money.

(33:22):
Obviously a thorough background check would have to happen if
it was legitimate. If it's not legitimate, that's when they're like, well,
we'd rather just go ahead and risk it, because, uh,
we don't want to get caught. So if it seems
like it's going through really smoothly, it's probably because it's
not a legitimate business. There are other warnings as well.
If the recruiter asks you for your Social Security number

(33:44):
or to scan your I D that's a red flag.
If they're email again, like the email address isn't part
of the business, that's a red flag. Also if if
people send you an email about a job or there's
a job posting and it's filled with misspellings and grammatical errors,
that's a huge red flag. Um and you know, I
mean human error except accepted. Right. Yeah, if it's a typo,

(34:04):
that's one thing, but if it's if it's yeah, that's
a problem. And also, uh, one thing I would do
is I would take a string of text from that
job posting and just put it into Google and do
a search and see if that same job posting is
popping up everywhere, because that's an indication that it's a
net that's being spread out to catch as many victims

(34:26):
as possible. In general, a quick Google search can can
take care of all. It can assumes you a lot
of these fears. Right, So let's talk about some of
the other scams. Like the payment forwarding is one of
the most popular ones out there, but there are a
lot of others. There's also one called postal forwarding, and
this is where your job ends up being to receive
shipments of goods and then you are supposed to reship

(34:49):
them to some foreign buyer and you get a commission
in return, and uh, and the way it starts to work.
Is it seems like everything's on the up and up.
You get stuff, you it money, you're you're sending it off.
But again, this is way too for the scammer to
hide a legal activity. The goods could be stolen. Uh,

(35:10):
they could be the wrong thing. Like it could be
that people are paying for one thing, but you're shipping
out something else and it's but your addresses on the return,
it's not the scammers address. So again, when they're when
problems come up, the authorities come after you, not the scammer.
So again it's setting up that fall guy. So yeah,
it could be again like stolen goods that are being

(35:31):
fenced overseas, it's just a it's it's you know, a scam.
Through and through other scams. You can run into our
the old bait and switch. That's when you get our
job posting and you go in and for an interview,
and then when you get to the place where you're interviewing,
you suddenly find out that the job you're interviewing for
is not the one that was posted. Um, and that
could be that it's for a legitimate job that they

(35:54):
just didn't have any way of filling, and that you
are not interested in, or it could be that's part
of a bigger scam. Um. There's also a fake check scams,
where the whole thing is that they'll they'll send you checks,
and what you're supposed to do is use those checks
to make purchases, and then you are supposed to send
a check that's good for the remainder. Right. So I

(36:17):
get a check that's for dollars, and I'm told to
purchase this one computer, but the computer only cost twelve,
so I use that check to try and purchase this computer. Meanwhile,
I'm sending off a check back to the scammer for
three hundred dollars, so the difference, right, only the check
they gave me as a bad check, and it eventually bounces,
and so then I'm out three hundred dollars plus whatever

(36:39):
the cost is for trying to process a bounce check,
and the scammer has my money and runs away. Yeah.
So uh, however, I might have a have to have
a computer in the bargain for a short while before
I have to return it. Um, yeah, it's not great, right,
I mean, And if you had to, if you shipped

(37:00):
off whatever it was you bought, then the scammer gets
both of the money and the item. So that's one
to look out for any time they're asking you to
make purchases on behalf of them, and especially if you're
spent sending money back to them. That's a huge, huge
red flag. So once should you do oh and oh,
I kind of talk about this kind of scam too.
There's also this thing called multi level marketing. I do

(37:22):
not think that I've heard about that one multi level marketing.
Uh one, you've heard about one sub group of multi
level marketing. It's called the pyramid scheme. So this is
multi level marketing is like all right, So in a
traditional sales role where you're working on commission, you have
a salesperson who is selling some sort of goods or
services and they get money every time they make a

(37:45):
successful sale. Right Glen Garry, Glenn Ross real estate in
Florida that you should never buy. But otherwise, you know,
it could be anything. Again, it could be completely legitimate.
There's nothing illegitimate about that other than the fact that
you know, some people take advantage of the US and
also contrive people to desperation depending upon the goods that
are trying to sell. Multi level marketing adds another element

(38:07):
to this, which is that when you recruit people to
come into the organization and sell stuff, you get money
not only for recruiting, but you get a percentage of
their sins well. So some people go so far as
to say all multi level marketing strategies are essentially pyramid schemes,
no matter what you call them. Others are say, no,

(38:29):
there are legitimate ways of doing this, but one thing
does appear to be true, which is that the more
it depends upon that that bring people in and you
will get some of their money. The more it depends
on that, the more likely the whole thing is going
to collapse once you have reached saturation and you cannot
bring more people in. And then once it collapses, the

(38:49):
only people who are left holding anything at all are
the ones who are at the top of the pyramid.
Everyone else suffers as a result. So that's something else
to look out for. If it's one of those things
where you know, you go through this whole process us
and they're going to train you up, and then you
find out that you're going door to door to recruit
people to be part of something bigger, that's more of
an indication that this is probably something that you don't

(39:09):
want to be a part of. Uh, Now, what do
you do if you've all victim to a scam? I
took this list from from a website that was all
about consumer alert, uh, consumer awareness of this sort of stuff,
and their suggestions are pretty drastic and and they they're

(39:29):
not easy things to do. So I'm going to go
through the list, but keep in mind like that this
is if you've fallen victim to a scam, this might
be necessary for you to be able to get your
life back on track, because scammers can do massive damage
to you and your online presence and your financial stability overall.
What we're saying is that it's much better to never

(39:50):
give people your social Security number, your bank account, any
any personal information that is highly sensitive like that until
after you have signed a whole lot of paperwork that
hires you into the organization and you and you have
and you are reasonably confident that the organizations on the
up and up. Yeah, and you know, talk to other
people who are in that organization and all that kind
of stuff, and and do research on it before because

(40:11):
otherwise this is what you gotta do. Close all bank
accounts at the bank where the scam took place. So
if you have more than one bank account, if you've
got a savings account and a checking account, you've gotta
close both of them. It's a good idea to change
banks completely and try so that you can avoid any
sort of social engineering attempts that the scam folks do. UH.
Social engineering that, of course, is when someone comes up
and says, hey, you know, I work for such and such,

(40:34):
I just need that password so I can get into
this system, or you know, anything along those lines. It's
really it's all about manipulating people to get access to
a secure system. UM. So you close all those bank accounts,
order a credit report from all three this is for
the US, for all three credit bureaus. UH, every couple
of months, and watch for unusual activity, and as soon

(40:54):
as you see any you have to start reporting fraud alerts.
So that's fun. I've had to do that personally when
I had a card stolen, so that was fantastic. Identity
theft is all over the place. UH. If you are
a victim of a payment forwarding scam, you should contact
Secret Service because that's the agency that handles this sort

(41:17):
of stuff in the United states. A lot of us
think of the Secret Service as the the bodyguards as
the president and the president's family and former presidents, but
they handle international fraud as well. Uh. Any you should
also file a police report with your local law enforcements officials,
and you should report the company name, the job posting

(41:37):
and all contact names to the job sites where that
scam was posted. So whether that's you know, Monster dot Com,
career Builder, all those kind of sites, you need to
alert them saying, and you should close all email addresses
that were associated with that job fraud. Yeah, then you
have to send on a message everywhere like hi, guys.
You know I used to have this email address I

(41:59):
don't use anymore. Yeah, it's it's ugly stuff. So of course,
the best strategy is don't get involved and don't get scammed,
which you know, it's easy to say in hindsight, but
knowing this stuff ahead of time gives you the tools
you need to be able to avoid it. Now, let's
talk a little bit about the stuff that does work.
I don't want this all to be doom and gloom

(42:20):
about you know, great night. What was just getting into
the job market and now I feel like there's no
way to succeed. That's not true. However, one of the
things that has kind of come to light is that
networking is probably the most important skill you can have
when you're in the job market. You know, talking to friends,

(42:40):
to family, to fellow students, if you got out of college,
joining professional groups and meeting up that way exactly. Uh, yeah,
there were I remember I went to a an organization
that was all about developing things like resumes and cover
letters when I needed to find a job, and that
helped me form relationships with other people that led to

(43:04):
some some actual progress in my job search. Uh. This
was years ago, but it still applies today. Um. The
Impact Group did a survey and they found that the
most effective method was networking that that came in at
and the the second most effective was finding an online
job posting and responding to it that had a twenty

(43:24):
success rate. Um. And then behind that became the importance
of getting a referral from within the organization. So someone
who already works there who knows you like that, you know,
full disclosure. Uh, there's someone who worked at how Stuff
Works who knew me, and that got that got me
uh some attention. It didn't it didn't get me hired

(43:46):
because she wasn't she didn't have a management position at
that time. But it at least gets here. It gets
your your so called foot in the door. It gets
someone who is not a robot to read your resume
and take it into extra special consideration. Right. It definitely
didn't guarantee me a job. The standards here are quite high,
and I had to really work hard to land it.
But that helped because it was one of those things

(44:09):
where instead of being in a huge pile of resumes,
I was in a slightly smaller pile of resumes. But
that happens a lot. And they also found that the
next most successful way of getting a job nine percent
of the time was getting a referral from outside the company.
But it was apparently, you know, a high enough person
from outside the company in another position that was another industry. Yeah,

(44:35):
this guy knows his stuff. You should hire him, Like
we're not hiring, but you should totally hire this guy
or this woman or whatever. And so it's interesting to
see that. I mean, apparently networking is particularly important for
high paying jobs. So I mean that makes sense too,
in the sense that you know, if it's a if
it's a high paying job, it's a high level position. Uh.

(44:57):
I think a lot of people really respond more to
that person to person interaction about Hey, you know, this
guy seems like a great guy as opposed to a
piece of paper, especially when you start seeing some very
very high ranking people, uh fibbing a bit on the resume.
I mean we've all heard about you know, yeah, you
can fudge a little bit here and there, and you know,

(45:19):
not to the extent necessarily of getting one of those
fake diplumas. But yeah, Scott Thompson, yeah, who CEO had
to step down after there was the scandal that he
had included fake credentials on his resume, which really said
that he had a degree that he did not possess.
So networking is really important, what no matter what the
position level, but if it's a higher paid position, particularly important.

(45:40):
Also research the companies you are applying to. Research them thoroughly.
I had a friend who got a job offer from
a company and she asked me to look into it
because she thought that something wasn't quite right. And when
I did research, it was a company that was supposedly
managing various uh real estate property uh throughout the city

(46:01):
of Atlanta, and it was giving these weird addresses and
I was like, I don't even know that the street
goes that far, and I would. I started going to
Google Maps and searching, and some of the addresses were
completely fake. Some of them were real, but there was
a totally different building at that address than the one
that was on the website. And worst yet, I took
a block of the text from there and to search

(46:22):
and found identical websites in different cities that use the
exact same language but different addresses, claiming to be this
company that was hiring on people. So it was a
total scam. I don't know, I don't know what specific
scam they were trying to pull, but it was obvious. Yeah,
knowledge it. So do your research and also use social

(46:44):
networking in a in a smart way. So not only
are you do you want to put forth your best
self on social networks, use them to help try and
network with people, find out what's out there, ask questions,
be genuine and uh use things like LinkedIn. There are
more and more companies that are actually using LinkedIn, and

(47:05):
there are more people who use LinkedIn who will if
they hear that you are in need of a job,
they will they'll look at their their contacts and see
is there someone out there, is there some position out
there this person would be a good fit for and
participate in conversations. You know, it's you can't you can't
expect something out of a network if you're not putting
anything back in, right. And I remember reading some It

(47:26):
was in a CNN article. As I recall, there was
some throwaway statistic. And again I don't know what study
this came from, so uh, take this with a grain
of salt, But they said that the average American when
hunting for a job, would spend forty minutes a day
doing it while spending three and a half hours watching TV. Uh.
So that obviously also prioritize, prioritize your job search. So

(47:48):
you know, if you follow these then you are more
likely to avoid the pitfalls and find success. Uh. A
lot of this stuff I learned the hard way when
I was searching for a job, because, like I said,
I was out of the job market for so long
that the search method had changed dramatically when I needed
to look for it again. And uh, and maybe as
time goes on, both online education and the jobs that

(48:11):
we can get access to online will evolve and become
more robust and become more reliable. Um, that's probably going
to be the case, but right now it's still this
trans kind of weird, weird mettal period, the whole wild
West thing. The same sort of stuff we saw with businesses,
you know, fifteen twenty years ago, we're starting to see

(48:31):
now in education and jobs in general. Uh And and
like I said, you know, once once you get through
all the the the stuff that you should be ignoring,
there are things out there that are worth paying attention to.
So don't get discouraged. Just make sure you use critical
thinking and and just be careful because you know, this
is your life and you don't want to you don't

(48:52):
want to sit there and say, well, there were like
three years of my life that I really regret because
it was just this this s yeah. Um So anyway,
that's that's our advice to you. If you guys have
any suggestions for future episodes of tech stuff, things that
we you think we need to uh to tackle. You
have a particular concern or maybe there's a there's a

(49:14):
gadget you've always wanted to know more about, or a
company that you think is really cool. Let us know,
send us a message. You can contact us by our
email address that is text stuff at Discovery dot com,
or let us know on Facebook or Twitter. You can
find us there with the handle text stuff H. S
W and Lauren and I will talk to you again

(49:35):
really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
is it has staff works dot com