By Julia CarpenterTHE WASHINGTON POST

Today's job seekers often say they're feeling overwhelmed by the number of postings online, exhausted by the long hunt and desperate for a breakthrough. Unfortunately, this vulnerable position makes them perfect targets for online job scams.

In 2025, nearly 25,000 people reported falling victim to an employment scam, according to data from the Better Business Bureau. That number has more than doubled since 2023, with a median loss of $1,000.

 These job ads are a perfect storm of pressing circumstances for a lot of people who are looking for employment,  said Josephine Wolff, professor of cybersecurity at Tufts University.  And also, these AI tools coming online can really scale up the type of fraud that has existed for a long time on the internet and in some ways even before the internet. 

Everyone will be familiar with spam texts promising opportunities to make fast cash while working from home. But the latest scams tend to exhibit a new level of sophistication.

Wolff used to tell people to look for red flags such as bad grammar or suspicious-looking graphics - but now artificial intelligence helps shady scams look completely legitimate.

Fraudsters will post ads for fake jobs, sometimes directly cribbing from existing postings or  ghost  jobs still floating around online. They may ask applicants to follow a link to a third-party website, one completely unaffiliated with a given company or legitimate hiring portal. From there, they may capture applicants' data directly, or they may then start asking applicants to share valuable data over email or text message.

Information such as your address or birth date could be valuable to a scammer, but so could things such as usernames and passwords you may frequently use on other sites, said Mona Terry, chief operating and programs officer at the Identity Theft Resource Center. Scammers could use that data to access your accounts directly or impersonate you when setting up new accounts elsewhere.

Most often, she said, they're intentionally targeting recent grads or low-income people. Both sets of people

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