Be Aware, the Majority of Work at Home Job Offers are Scams

One expert interviewed in a 20/20 TV report on Internet job scams estimates that  “54 out of 55 work at home offerings are scams“.

We are making every effort to provide links to legitimate work opportunities, those activities that are more-often-than-not harmful to the workers or businesses will generally be omitted from this directory, some famously poor choices, including:
Envelop Stuffing and Mystery Shopping, we are also not optimistic for your chances in Paid to Click and Data Entry.

———  Shady Work at Home Job Offer Classics ——–

Envelop Stuffing – A scam older than the internet: Reported errors in your turned in work will almost always prevent you recovering your initial deposit. Automated envelop stuffing equipment is actually simpler than, and could have been invented before the printing press.

Mystery Shopping – Number 8 on the BBB top scams list, a variation of the Nigerian counterfeit check scam hires you to make store purchases, with their payoff coming when you test Western Union’s money transfer service with a portion of your advance check, ultimately, sometimes weeks after receiving the check, it fails to clear the issuing bank, leaving you financially and criminally liable for the bad check.
[While your bank is required to release the funds within a few days, it can take 7-10 days for out of state and up to a month for foreign bank, until the "floated" check actually fails to clear the issuing bank.]

Paid to Click – While workers are paid some of the time, there’s almost always an element of fraud involved, ultimately victimizing businesses such as small online stores, while you are paid 1 or 2 pennies to click a paid advertisement, the store owner is losing perhaps 50 cents for a visitor with no intention of buying, the big winners are the web site operator hosting the ad and the PTC brokerage. Workers are regularly ripped off by fly by night operators, some offering a $1 per click paid only after 1000 clicks, something always goes wrong before one reaches the fantasy $1000 payout.

Data Entry – While a legitimate job in the early pre automation days, the actual need for manual data entry is well below the amount of work advertised, in most cases you will lose the up-front registration/training fee.

Multi Level Marketing – While there are both good and bad MLM companies, too often the sales rep’s family ends up being their biggest customers, see the episode of Penn and Teller’s B.S. program taking a cut at MLM.