Employment Scam

I posted a message over in the Employment Scam section, but I need to see if I need to do anything else to protect myself. I have changed my cell phone number, my bank account, and put a fraud alert on my credit. I have also contacted Elance, and they have delisted the posting.

I responded to a posting on Elance yesterday and ended up giving up some of my personal information .

This is the first received the following in response:

Dear Applicant,

To proceed with the job details and the hiring procedure, you are expected to have me added to your messenger contact list which is very important in the hiring process. Interviews will begin immediately you have added and attended to, i hope to have you on at that time.

Below is my list of available Instant Messenger I.Ds:
[email protected] (Yahoo Messenger)
[email protected] (Google Talk)

Add me on which ever you prefer and then send me an IM message with your full name, cell number, location (State/City), position being applied for and your hiring i.d, which is hr20, immediately you have me added on, this would enable me verify your application for employment before we proceed to discuss on the job details. Looking
forward to hearing from you.


Mrs Baker,
HR dept.

The first thing you should look out for in any email you have doubts about is the spelling and wording. It is usually the first indicator that the email is from a scammer. As English speaking people will write with few mistakes, particularly if they are contacting a possible employee. Some have very poor grammar, however that can be a double edged sword as even English people aren't really the best at it either.Another point to anyone who may have had an email like this is no company or department would email you using a publicly available email service such as msn or yahoo. They would use a company based email. Here is an example.

[email protected]
real world example
@gov.uk

I posted a message over in the Employment Scam section, but I need to see if I need to do anything else to protect myself. I have changed my cell phone number, my bank account, and put a fraud alert on my credit. I have also contacted Elance, and they have delisted the posting.

I responded to a posting on Elance yesterday and ended up giving up some of my personal information .

This is the first received the following in response:

Dear Applicant,

To proceed with the job details and the hiring procedure, you are expected to have me added to your messenger contact list which is very important in the hiring process. Interviews will begin immediately you have added and attended to, i hope to have you on at that time.

Below is my list of available Instant Messenger I.Ds:
[email protected] (Yahoo Messenger)
[email protected] (Google Talk)

Add me on which ever you prefer and then send me an IM message with your full name, cell number, location (State/City), position being applied for and your hiring i.d, which is hr20, immediately you have me added on, this would enable me verify your application for employment before we proceed to discuss on the job details. Looking
forward to hearing from you.


Mrs Baker,
HR dept.

THE RED IS ALL THE MISTAKES.Someone who works in Human Resources would be expected to have good keyboard and English skills, as they are required to act as the go between for the company that they work for, and the potential employee or applicant.
Here is how it should have been worded.

I posted a message over in the Employment Scam section, but I need to see if I need to do anything else to protect myself. I have changed my cell phone number, my bank account, and put a fraud alert on my credit. I have also contacted Elance, and they have delisted the posting.

I responded to a posting on Elance yesterday and ended up giving up some of my personal information .

This is the first received the following in response:

Dear Applicant,

To proceed with the job details and the hiring procedure, you are expected to have added one or both of my email addresses, shown below, to your messenger contact list as it is very important in the hiring process. Interviews will begin immediately, after you have added me to your list of email contacts and recieved an invitation to attend an interview at a later specified date and time, I hope to hear from you at that time.

Below is a list of my available Instant Messenger I.Ds:
[email protected] (Yahoo Messenger)
[email protected] (Google Talk)

Add me using whichever email you prefer and then send me an IM message with your full name, cell number, location (State/City), the job position being applied for and your hiring i.d, which is hr20, immediately after you have me added on to you contact list, this would enable me verify your application for employment before we proceed to a discussion on the job details. Looking forward to hearing from you.


Mrs Baker,
HR dept.

Hope this helps anyone who may have gotten similar emails.