Job seekers often have plenty of hurdles to landing a new job. For one, many companies are keeping “ghost listings” up on job boards that they don’t really plan to fill, for a variety of reasons. Scammers have also taken advantage of the many recent layoffs to trick people into giving their personal information and money with fake job ads using sophisticated techniques. And now, scammers have honed their AI skills to use ChatGPT to make their fake job listings more personalized and convincing, as reported by Consumer Affairs.
If you’re looking for a new job, you need to be on your toes. Scammers are aware you want a remote, high-paying job with unlimited time off and benefits—who doesn’t—and they’ve been slowly but surely meddling with AI to streamline most of their process. At this point, they can be not just automated by easily scrapping your data taken from public information and leaks from companies, but they can also use that information to craft personalize messages to make you feel sought-after.
How do fake AI job scams work?
There are two types of scams you can run into while seeking jobs. One is fake job ads taken from real employers and posted on popular employment sites like Indeed and LinkedIn. They are taken from real but outdated job postings with some alterations, as reported by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
The other more concerning one uses AI to combine the previous fake job listings with your personal information to make a convincing, but unsolicited, job offer directly to you. According to ZDNET, they lure you into clicking malicious links and sharing personal information while posing as employers and recruiters.
Here’s a basic sample of a generic offer that was done using ChatGPT 3 (not even the latest version) in under one minute, using only public information from my LinkedIn and Lifehacker profile:
Daniel Oropeza [Recipient’s Address] [City, State, Zip Code]Dear Daniel Oropeza,I am delighted to offer you the exciting position of Senior Writer, focusing on scams, as an extension of your exemplary work at Lifehacker. Your impressive contributions to actionable journalism have caught our attention, making you the perfect fit for this role. With your remarkable reporting experience at the Miami Herald and your education from Columbia, you possess the ideal background to dive into the world of scams, empowering our readers with vital knowledge to protect themselves from fraudulent practices. Your exceptional skills in pitching, researching, and reporting will undoubtedly strengthen our team’s mission.We are pleased to inform you that this position is entirely remote, allowing you the flexibility to work from the comfort of your preferred location. Moreover, we believe in a healthy work-life balance, and as part of our commitment to our employees’ well-being, we offer unlimited time off. We believe that this approach fosters creativity, productivity, and overall job satisfaction. The benefits of joining our team extend beyond the freedom to work remotely and unlimited time off. We offer a competitive salary package, along with comprehensive benefits and ample opportunities for professional growth and development. We sincerely hope you will accept this offer and become an essential part of our efforts to educate and protect our audience from scams. If you have any questions or need further information, please do not hesitate to contact us at [Your Phone Number] or [Your Email Address]. Congratulations once again on your outstanding achievements, Daniel. We eagerly await your response and the possibility of welcoming you to our team. Warmest regards,[Your Name]
“Sophisticated scammers can easily automate the process of scraping information posted by users on social media and using it with AI to create very convincing personalized social engineering and phishing attacks,” Dominic Chorafakis, founder of the cybersecurity firm Akouto, told Consumer Affairs.
Chorafakis also told Consumer Affairs that phishing attacks created using AI were much more successful in tricking users into clicking links and opening malicious attachments than those created by humans. You can find these scams coming from job listing sites, online ads, posts on social media, and unsolicited job offers.
As you can see, you can no longer rely on old red flags like grammar to determine that a message is a scam.
How to spot fake job listings and offers
There’s no reliable tool to detect AI that we know of yet, but we are not defenseless. There are still ways to stay protected. Here is what the FTC recommends:
- Do an online search. Look up the name of the company or the person who’s hiring you, plus the words “scam,” “review,” or “complaint.” You might find out they’ve scammed other people.
- Talk to someone you trust. Describe the offer to them. What do they think? This also helps give you vital time to think about the offer.
- Don’t pay for the promise of a job. Legitimate employers, including the federal government, will never ask you to pay to get a job. Anyone who does is a scammer.
- Beware of fake check scams. No legitimate potential employer will ever send you a check and then tell you to send on part of the money, or buy gift cards with it. That’s a fake check scam. The check will bounce, and the bank will require you to repay the amount of the fake check.
Some other helpful things to add to your list are verifying the job recruiter’s identity. Check their email to see if the domain is from a company and not a personal email. Check their connections to make sure they work at the company they claim to work for. You should also check research the company itself to make sure it’s legit (if they link to a company site that is well-known, study the URL to make sure there’s no extra letters and numbers that could indicate a fake website). Most of our techniques for spotting fake job listings would help you for these AI scams as well.
And really, if they straight up make you an offer without any face-to-face interview (at least a Zoom meeting), it’s a scam.