How to Identify the Fake Job Offering Emails Resembling Top Companies

Everyone has taken the power of the internet and emails into their hands to search for jobs for their careers. Fortunately it has become so easy to find a job through the internet but unfortunately, it has become so easy for the hackers to cash the ignorance of people using the internet. Some of my friends were also been fallen to the hacker’s pranks twice and more. They asked me to advise them to identify such fake job offering mails resembling the rightful companies. So I tend to write this article for those who are finding a way to recognize those fake job offering emails resembling legitimate and genuine companies.

Even I have got and been getting such spam emails in hundreds to my mailbox every day. With very good experience of internet security and hacking methodologies, I have observed some impersonations and concluded some points to be analyzed before judging an email. Let’s go through them briefly one by one in no order.

Observation 1: No Much Detail

My first observation is that the fraudulent email never looks furnished with detailed information. The specifications in the email would be vague and not clear at all. Take a look at the following email from my friend’s inbox. it came with an attachment with nobody.

Conclusions:

# No legitimate company would send an email with no body or subject attaching a neatly formatted letter conveying the prank details.

# No legitimate company would risk its reputation sending you a non-detailed email that makes the readers upset.

Observation 2: Non-specific & Unrelated Descriptions

Secondly, I went to the detection of the letter. When I opened the letter from the attachments I’ve shown above, it says,

  

The email is impersonating L&T engineering company offering my friend to join as ‘executive/manager’. Look at the quote I mentioned here. My friend is an IT graduate, how could he be taken as manager. Sounds funny right!!

Zooming at the phrase will illustrate you, here it is,

#1 Another non-specific observation you should notice is the word ‘respective department’. How could a guy be called for an interview or notified about shortlisting until and unless he is aware of the designation of the job and department? As per them, they have selected my friend by considering the academic project. Here is the catch again. Note this one, because it sometimes can be ignored while assessing a mail. I told you that my friend is an IT guy, even the guy who is pretending to hire him should know that by the ‘academic records’ consideration. So the word ‘respective’ doesn’t suit the criteria here. He might have specified it clearly ‘IT Department’.

#2 Look at the second line. ‘Selected online’ wow that sounds great! my friend is a Bill Gates and this hiring guy found him online just by googling and shortlisted his name. Is this possible? for god sake even? NEVER!!. How could he select a guy living online for such a prestigious ‘executive/manager’ job? did he found my friend on facebook? or twitter? bull crap. He should specify the job portal or consultancy at least!

#3 Observe the last lines. ‘Selected candidate can choose the desired location’. Does that company is complete lack of employees or what? Let us suppose so, then why would it offer the min salary of Rs.45,000/-PM.? Besides all this what is this last statement ‘you are going to get employment……….’ what does that mean? Just think!

Conclusions:

# No legitimate company sends such a non-detailed email to their shortlisted candidates using phrases like demonstrated above.

#  No company just shortlists you by seeing you online by googling. The HRM has some procedures to go with during recruitment. If they specify that they shortlisted you watching your resume, they would specify the job portal or consultancy they referred you from.

Observation 3: Security Deposit

#1 Look at the above screenshot. According to it, the selected candidate should security deposit Rs.10,200/- into so and so banks specified. But how? just by filling up the deposit form? I don’t think so. After that what’s with this Air ticket? for what? flying to Pune, Mumbai, Banglore, Chandigarh and New Delhi?  That too they are going to send you air ticket only after security deposit. Is the guy(my friend) selected or just shortlisted? Can’t he go himself for the interview?LOL

#2 Look at the line ‘this is compulsory because this is company process’ which company? fraudulent and co.? That made me rolled on the floor laughing.

Conclusions:

# No legitimate company asks for security deposits before getting hired. Recruited people might be asked to security deposit some amount of money according to their company norms but that amount won’t be in some Rs.10,200/- or Rs.16,232 like that. I strongly believe that amount would be in lacks along with the particular time period of the agreement.  

Observation 4: Look at the Grammar

Zoom in the offer letter above and read the whole once. You will find blunder of grammar mistakes and spelling mistakes.

Conclusions:

# Everyone of us might not be proficient in grammar. Don’t worry you may leave this observation and go on with the other ones.

Observation 5: Fraudulent Always Take Precautions

# Observe the highlighted text. The selected candidates are not allowed to visit the office in advance. Why so? are they afraid of being revealed if the candidate visits the office just before one day of the interview?

# Group code number is not transferrable. What does that mean? Are they worried that their non-existed identity could be enquired?

# Date of the security deposit is right after the day my friend got this mail and interestingly the date of interview is on next month almost a month later. What does the cheater think? Can we forget about the guy in just a month who made us deposit foolishly into his account?

Conclusions:

# There is nothing to do with the pre-advanced visits for the company. No company restricts so.

# Fraudulent will take care not to be caught at any time. The above statements in the above letter illustrate so.

Observation 6: They Don’t Care About Format of the Letter

 

The official letter will be in a professional format with neat justification and font styles. The formatting of the letter or email mostly aims at conveying the information. Genuine companies or impersonating companies like our demo would always try to catch the reader’s interest. Take a look at the signature and attribution pane. Do you think it is professional?

I believe the professional attribution pane includes the

Name of the HR or signature or relevant,

His position or designation in the company,

Company name,

Address,

Contact details

Website

These attribution parameters may change according to the companies but would the format would be the same as specified above.

Companies take this seriously

Many companies are aware of this impersonating emails in the name of them. So they warn people on their sites to be careful and checkout the norms that the company follows.

TCS is one such company warns people on their website regarding this fraudulent activity.

TVS is another company warning with a caution notice on their website, here it is,


Not only these two there are many companies that warn about the scam going on with their name. Some of them like Maruthi Suzuki, another TATA company, even Google and Gmail are also under attack.

Getting a genuine job online isn’t a difficult task, but we should be careful in responding to these spam emails. BEWARE!! BE SAFE ON INTERNET!!

Comment below if you think you got a suspected email like this and you can’t assess it. We will assess it for you!