Work At Home Places and Warnings

Today while I was at work, a woman came into to send 6 thousands dollars to a man in Nigeria for real estate she was going to buy. It seemed like a scam to me considering all the scams that come from Nigeria, but she seemed determined to invest her money in this property, site unseen anyway.

The sayings that are out there, like: "If it seems to be to good to be true, if probably is" or "Buyer beware" come to mind when I think of buying real estate site unseen or getting jobs that are sent via email.

The BBB.org has some good words of wisdom when it comes to specifically looking for jobs - some good info at the site.

# Employer e-mails are rife with grammatical and spelling errors -
Job postings with grammatical errors seem like a give away to me as spellchecker is a common tool online now.

# E-mails purporting to be from job posting Web sites claiming there’s a problem with a job hunter’s account-
Fraud websites phish for your information to gather data on you or even install malicious spyware on your computer.

# An employer asks for extensive personal information such as social security or bank account numbers -
This is a huge red flag to me, I would much rather give this information in person and only if I am sure the job is a guarantee; like setting up my w-2 forms

# An employer offers the opportunity to become rich without leaving home-
Even though there is the occasional good job out there can be worked from home, this to me falls under the "too good to be true" idea.

# An employer asks for money upfront -
Via bbb.org: "Aside from paying for a uniform, it is rarely advisable for an applicant to pay upfront fees or make a required purchase to get a job."

# The salary and benefits offered seem too-good-to-be-true -

# The job requires the employee to wire money through Western Union or MoneyGram-
I think the final two items are the biggest red lights to me, if the job offer makes me scowl and say "Hmmmm?" I am on guard.


However, there are some good jobs out there and Clark Howard and CNN both put together a few, with some overlapping.

CNN - Companies that will hire you to work at home. They list Alpine Access, Convergys, Extended Presence, Internet Girl Friday, LiveOps, Spheris, Staffcentrix, West At Home, Voicelog and VIPDesk

Clark Howard - Work from Home options are: alpineaccess, arise.com, convergysworkathome.com, elance.com, intellicare.com, liveops.com and msvas.com. There are others as well.

But I want to let you know that some of these jobs fall in the BBB.org's idea of a red flag in that they ask for money upfront and for background checks so I would do much more research on those websites if you are interested.