by Amreen Bi

Created on: December 25, 2008

How many times have you seen an advert or job listing which asks if you want to work from home? Whether the ads are in newspapers or sent to your inbox all the adverts seem to be saying the same thing. You can easily get paid a large income for minimal effort. Some go as far as saying you can make thousands of $'s in your pyjamas! Are these legitimate vacancies or are you being scammed?

Well the answer is pretty simple; they are a scam. Scammers have been trying to use this method to fleece innocent victims who are looking for legitimate work. They advertise in local newspapers, the web and even on lampposts. The jobs' usually include stuffing envelopes for cash, assembling, reading emails and typing at home.

Stuffing envelopes for extra money does seem like an ideal job for many people. Straightforward job but is it legit? Not really, you see a lot of companies nowadays have plenty of computers, printers and processing machines to do all this for them. They can just print off an address and send it themselves. Even if these opportunities do exist they are rare.

If you are a business (big or small) would you waste your money ( which can be used elsewhere) to pay someone to stuff envelopes for you? Businesses have confidential data, if you owned a business would you trust a random stranger of the internet with this sensitive data. Your business could be fined heavily and even face prosecution.

People will find these adverts even on genuine recruitment websites. If you think an advert is a possible scam don't reply instead contact the recruitment company via their email address and notify them. If you do reply to these adverts the scammers can send your details to fellow cheats and even they can contact you too.

You will be asked to pay a small' fee for materials/to find the secret' to their success/ training/admin fees etc. No honest business will ask you to pay money in advance. Once you have paid the fee you will not hear from them again and even if they have given you a contact number and address (which could also be fake) you will never be able to reach them as they are too busy to deal with your call.

Home assembly kits also require you to pay a fee to pay for your kit or membership. Like the envelope scam once you pay the fee you are not likely to hear from them again. If you do get offered work it still does not mean that they are offering genuine work You will get your kit and tools to get you started. After you've sent your completed product back they will

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