Current mood:

cranky

Cheeky Fuckers! (The Employment Scammers Strike Again) - "LKT Company"
The fake job scammers are at it again. This time, they're sending stuff out under my email address! How do I know this? Well, I woke up this morning to discover I had an inbox full of delivery failure notices.

So here's the ad body:

[Hello/Hi],

[Now/Today/At this moment] we [can offer/offer/have] [full/full-time] [and/&] [part-time/half-time/halfday/partial] [vacancy/opening/employment post/job post/position].

[Our Company/LKT Company] is [a worldwide/an international/a global] [goods distributor/goods retailer/goods distributing organization/goods resaler] [that is why/so] your [main/general/basic/central] [tasks/duties] will [be connected with/include] sales [customer] support for [operations/deals/arrangements] held in Australia: keep the [records/data] of all the [purchases/arrangments/deals] and [orders payment/payments][are being made]; [cope/communicate/collaborate/directly corporate] with [our clients/customers] in [USA/America], [Eastern] Europe and Asia; [give/provide/do/make] all the necessary service [and support] to our [sales/distribution/selling] [department/office].

You will [get/be paid/have] up to 3600 AUD [per month/monthly] plus [benefits/addition/bonuses] for the [partial/part time] [vacancy/post/position/opening] and [for] full-time [vacancy/basis/position/post] - 5900 AUD [monthly/per month] plus [benefits/addition/bonuses].
[There is/Our Company has/We have] a [probation/trial] period, during [this period/which] you will be trained and guided. This period is [also] paid.

[Minimum Requirements/Conditions] are easy. You just need to have [personal] [computer/PC] with [Internet access/access to the Internet], also [basic] Excel skills (the software must be pre-installed), [interpersonal and] [good] [communication skills] [negotiation experience] [and positive motivation].

Please [answer/respond] to us to get more [details/information] at: [see email list below]

[Have a great day!/Have a bless day!/Thank you for your attention!/Thank you!/Regards!/Thank you for attention!/Regards!]

The bits in square brackets are where the script which sends these things out picks from a list of options to "personalise" the emails. Essentially, one of those options is chosen for each version of the mail at random (where there's only one option, the text itself is optional), in order to bypass spam filters on the servers they're hijacking to get their "message" out (the spam filters are looking for large amounts of similar text; the programs which generate these emails are evolving in lock-step with the filtering programs. If you're ever looking for a good locus for emergent AI, consider the possibilities of email filtering and spam blocking software, and the stuff designed to get around it!).

Now, the email address to check for "more details" varies with each of the letters - here's a list of the selection I have, if you're wanting to know what to beware of:

SandraAnn68@hotmail.com
LaurieMary01123@hotmail.com (4 out of 32)
ElizabethKristine205742@hotmail.com (2 out of 32)
ThereseErin2@hotmail.com (4 out of 32)
MaryPatrizia7867@hotmail.com (6 out of 32)
MelissaLinda417@hotmail.com (2 out of 32)
MelodyAnn2301@hotmail.com (3 out of 32)
GraceNorma34882@hotmail.com (4 out of 32)
NancyDonna08300@hotmail.com
PatriciaRosa81@hotmail.com (2 out of 32)
LatoyaAnne7662888@hotmail.com
DeliaLauren4185@hotmail.com
MaryShirley87838@hotmail.com

The Subject lines also vary. Again, here are the ones I have available from the sample of delivery failure notices.

Subject: NewPosition 55.4431
Subject: Notification AU Post8E4845489:666
Subject: PositionAlert458Y75336479/648
Subject: Job Offer.AU26S216119/5122
Subject: SeekAU Vacancy Offer0055H669253.6578
Subject: Job Offer.AU0520U86911316-92672
Subject: Job notification AU289E33767481-2653
Subject: Seek Vacancy Alert997K392773578
Subject: Job Notification 9-3353
Subject: JobVacancy 340027
Subject: Job Offer9Q2443177-35622
Subject: JobPositionAU24I426465:3758
Subject: Job notification AU726Q817429637153
Subject: AU Employment Alert 48.8499
Subject: VacancyLetter 542.27603
Subject: Australia Job30D2721397-2253
Subject: PositionAlert 29494910
Subject: AU Job Alert0182J32533724-5721
Subject: EmploymentAlert34A6167642861287
Subject: SeekAU Vacancy Offer386T93457221-9447
Subject: Job Notification 23984777
Subject: PositionAlert56V882363247718
Subject: JobPost 904011,6432
Subject: Job Offer.AUD757869838913
Subject: EmploymentAlert5R7321367;28832
Subject: JobPositionAU1Y17132858679
Subject: AU Employment Alert 5226365254
Subject: SeekAU Vacancy Offer57J4875556;77161
Subject: NewPosition 509;857
Subject: Job OfferG81397668587
Subject: Job Offer.AU12V4948211;4856
Subject: PositionAlertU8156775-383

(Incidentally - this is why keeping track of the subject lines and body text of these emails is a bit of a waste of time. The body text is boilerplate, the subject line is randomised.)

On to the scam flags flying:

1) They're offering too much. For full-time work, they're offering "up to" $5900AUD per month, which is $295 per day, or $36.88 per hour, plus bonuses, for largely unskilled admin work. Note the "up to" there - that's the theoretical maximum you could earn in a month. The actual amount you'll be paid is probably much lower, if, indeed,you're likely to be paid at all, rather than having your accounts hoovered out.

2) A lot of the details essential to a standard job ad are missing or skimped. There's no mention of who the company is in quite a lot of the ads (because it doesn't exist), there's no listing of what kinds of skills and experience they're looking for (because the main skill or quality they're after is gullibility). The contact address is a hotmail throw-away account with no reference to the name of the company either (which is a rather severe mismatch to the story of a company which is big enough to be trading with clients in the USA, Europe and Asia, especially given the comparatively low cost of domain names and domain hosting).

3) The economy world-wide is largely contracting. You can hear the economic gloom and doom forecasts any time you turn on the TV or radio, or any time you look at a news article online or in a newspaper. In that kind of economic environment, employment becomes harder to get - there is a surplus of people looking for work, and a deficit of available employment for them to participate in. In such an economy, there is no need for a legitimate employer to reach out to random people on the internet if they're seeking employees. Indeed, most job ads I'm looking at these days say they're only going to be contacting the successful candidates for interviews, due to the sheer volume of replies.

4) Googling "LKT Company" brings up at least two scam warnings already. This is always something of a hint. About the only difference between the current "jobs" being offered and the previous scam is that the amount of money has been increased by $100AUD on each level.

5) They hijacked my flippin' email account to send these things out! (I grant you, that one's a bit of a personal thing). Needless to say I've altered my password. But if you EVER receive a job offer purporting to be sent from megpie71 at yahoo dot com dot ay you, it's guaranteed to be a scam. I don't do HR, and if I did do HR, I would be sending things out under a corporate email address, not from my private email.

There isn't a job open, the money doesn't exist, and if they had anything decent to offer they wouldn't need to be hijacking other people's email addresses in order to pass the message on.

This entry was originally posted at http://megpie71.dreamwidth.org/63007.html. Please comment there using OpenID.