In the current economic climate, most of us are looking for ways to earn a bit of extra money. What could be better than being paid to stay at home and work? If you search on the internet for work at home opportunities you will be given thousands of results to look through. There are some legitimate jobs around but unfortunately they are outnumbered by scams. The most common work at home scam jobs are data entry, envelope stuffing and processing information.
A genuine work at home job will not ask you for money upfront. Anything which asks for a fee for "admin purposes" or "training materials" is not genuine. They will take your money and run or provide you with work which they then won't pay you for. One of the most obvious signs of a scam is an advert which says that you can earn thousands just by working a few hours a week. You can't. There's a common saying "if something is too good to be true it probably is" which is an excellent thing to bear in mind when looking at job adverts like that. You are not going to become a millionaire working for them no matter what they may promise you.
A scam advert will be vague and give away as few details as possible about the job. They usually don't require you to have any experience and the attributes they do ask for (broadband internet connection, able to speak English etc) are very common. If they are featured on a job board website the only contact detail will probably be an email address and not a professional sounding one either. If they do provide a company name do some research. See if they have a website. If they do, does it have contact details? You could try phoning or emailing them for more information about the vacancy and see if and how long it takes to get an answer. Look for a privacy policy and read every bit of information on the site including the small print. See if you can find some reviews by people who have dealt with the company before. If they are overwhelmingly negative or the word "scam" seems to be associated with their name a lot, it's best to avoid them.
Sometimes you don't even have to look for a scam job, they come to you via email. If you receive any unsolicited emails offering you a position be very careful. They will probably make outrageous claims about how much money you can earn and won't even be addressed specifically to you. Unless it's from somewhere you are expecting a job or interview offer from, delete it. Don't forget to trust your intuition. If something doesn't seem right or you are not completely happy then don't take it any further. If you really aren't sure whether a job advert is genuine or not, ask others to take a look at it. They may spot something fishy about it that you haven't.