Job scam detector

Check a job offer or recruiter message for scam signals — free, private.

Job scams have become one of the most common and costly frauds aimed at ordinary people, and they have grown alongside the rise of remote work and AI-written messages that look increasingly professional. The tactics are consistent even as the polish improves, and once you know the patterns they are hard to un-see. This tool checks a posting, offer or recruiter message for those patterns and gives you an honest read before you act on it.

Paste the full text — the job ad, the recruiter's email or WhatsApp message, or the offer letter — and it flags the signals behind most job scams: requests to pay a fee or deposit to start, requests for bank or ID details before any real interview, anything involving cheque-cashing, wire transfers or reshipping packages, contact pushed entirely onto WhatsApp or Telegram, unrealistically high pay for no experience, and personal Gmail addresses used on behalf of a supposed company. Each signal is explained, and you get a plain verdict.

It is important to be honest about what this can and cannot do. It can catch the common red flags, which is enough to stop most scams, because scammers rely on the same small set of tactics. It cannot confirm that a job is genuine — a clean result means no common scam signals were found, not that the opportunity is real. The only reliable confirmation is to verify the company yourself: find their actual website and careers page independently rather than clicking a link the message gave you, and check that the role and the recruiter genuinely exist there.

There are a few rules that hold regardless of how professional a message looks. A legitimate employer will never ask you to pay them money to start — no registration fee, training cost, equipment deposit or "activation" charge. Money flows from employer to employee, never the other way, and any reversal of that is the single clearest sign of a scam. A real employer will not ask for your bank account, national ID or card details before a verified interview, and no genuine job involves you cashing cheques, buying gift cards, or forwarding packages on someone's behalf.

The financial-detail scams deserve specific warning because they cause the most harm. A common version sends you a cheque "for equipment", asks you to deposit it and wire part of it onward; the cheque later bounces and you are liable for the full amount. Another asks for your bank login "to set up payroll". No legitimate onboarding works this way. If a message is steering toward your money or your account access before you have even spoken to a real person, stop — that is the scam, whatever else the message says.

If you have already shared details or sent money, act quickly rather than with embarrassment. Contact your bank immediately to stop or reverse a transfer and to protect your account; the sooner you call, the more can often be recovered. Change any password you may have exposed. Report the scam to your national consumer-protection or fraud authority, which both helps others and can be necessary for any recovery. Being targeted is not a failure of judgment — these operations are professional, deliberately urgent, and designed to work on careful people.

This runs entirely in your browser: the text you paste is never uploaded, which matters when you are checking a message that already contains your own details. If you want to go further, our guide on how to spot a job scam covers the tactics and the verification steps in depth, and the recruiter finder helps you confirm whether a recruiter genuinely works where they claim.

• ✓Flags fee requests, data requests, and money-transfer scams
• ✓Explains each red flag in plain language
• ✓Honest verdict — it catches scams, never fakes safety
• ✓Free, private — the text is never uploaded

Part of JobStraight — the honest AI job-search platform. Runs in your browser; your data stays on your device.