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Diving Into the Talent Pool – Threat Actors Target Job Seekers with Complex Recruitment Scams
Key Data
Are you in the market for a new job? Talent scouts aren’t the only ones aggressively recruiting. Netcraft has observed a recent spike in recruitment scams, uncovering significant impact from three unique adversaries, each leveraging different tactics to target job seekers:
- Threat actor #1 – Impersonates employers in the tech vertical using advance fee fraud (AFF) tactics
- Threat actor #2 – Impersonates a logistics recruitment agency using similar AFF tactics:
- Localized scams focused on 18 geographies
- 63,000 people targeted in the U.S. alone
- Threat actor #3 – Impersonates the Government of Singapore to steal victims’ personal identity number and Telegram account details
According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), in 2023, more than $500m was lost to job-related fraud in the U.S., more than double the 2022 figure ($200m). It is anticipated that 2024 will beat that record. We have felt this increase across Netcraft’s business, with employees in the U.S., U.K., and Australia receiving lure messages for recruitment scams throughout the year. And we’re not alone.
Several economic and technosocial factors – greater competition, lower wages, the cost-of-living crisis, the rise of zero-hours gig work, etc. – have created an ideal climate for criminals to exploit job seekers. This is especially true for those in lower economic communities.
This article reviews the exploits’ common components, adversary insights, the proliferation of these scams, and how to protect yourself and your employees.
Dissecting the Scam
Among the most common scams observed are task scams. Let’s break these down into their parts, exposing how and why they can be so effective at tricking eager targets out of time, work product, and money.
What Are Task Scams?
Task scams are a specific form of recruitment scam (or “job scam”), which impersonate legitimate employers or recruiters to financially exploit victims. In some ...