A small business owner in Aurora is speaking out to warn potential job seekers about fraudulent job listings posted online.
Brian Murphy is a certified public accountant who said he was surprised to hear about a job listing for an administrative assistant for his company posted to the job search website ‘Indeed.’
“My next-door neighbor sent my wife a text message, saying jokingly, ‘I’d like to apply for your husband’s administrator bookkeeping position,’ and I looked at the text that she sent me and I didn’t have that ad at all placed with Indeed,” Murphy said.
The listing even had a salary range, something Murphy said he would never post on a job advertisement.
Murphy notified Indeed and the company marked the job listing as fraudulent.
He said he believes a hacker was hoping to get people to apply for the position in an effort to obtain social security numbers and other sensitive information.
“It just is disheartening that there are so many ways that people can be taken advantage of in this,” Murphy said.
Investigations
NBC 5 Investigates reported on a similar issue in 2018, in which a Buffalo Grove woman said she was duped out of nearly $2,700 as the result of a fake job listing.
Indeed said it has a team dedicated to the search quality effort, employing a variety of techniques to review job advertisements to determine their suitability.
“Indeed reserves the right to remove any job postings that do not meet our standards and we encourage job seekers to report any suspect job advertisements to us, or if they feel it necessary, to make a report to the police,” Indeed said in a statement. “Jobseekers should never agree to send payment to a potential employer, and charging fees is a violation of Indeed’s rules for companies posting on our site.”
Indeed also urged job seekers to insist on in-person meetings.
