Remote job scams grew 41 percent last year. Even the legitimate-looking postings can be exploitative: 1099 misclassifications, unpaid "training weeks," pyramid MLMs dressed as sales roles. Here is what to look for on both sides.
Ten red flags
1. The pay range is missing or comically wide
"$18–$85/hr" is not a range. That is a placeholder. Real employers with real budgets post real bands.
2. You need to pay for anything
Equipment, training, a background check, a "starter kit." Legitimate employers pay for these. Full stop.
3. The interview happens entirely on Telegram, WhatsApp, or Google Chat
Real companies use Zoom, Google Meet, or Teams with a company-domain email. Chat-only interviews are almost always fraud.
4. They offer you the job in the first 30 minutes
Nobody hires a stranger in half an hour. This is the mechanic of a fake-check scam.
5. "Independent contractor" but exclusive availability required
If they require set hours, a specific system, and prohibit outside clients, you are an employee misclassified as a 1099. Report to the DOL.
6. The posting is copied verbatim from Indeed
Paste the first paragraph into Google in quotes. If it returns 40 identical postings across "Optimum Careers," "Global Remote," and "Home Business Solutions" — it is a scraper.
7. The company has no LinkedIn presence, or 40 employees who all joined last month
Cross-reference the company on LinkedIn. Zero recent employees = shell. All recent employees = suspicious.
8. The domain was registered in the last 90 days
Run the company domain through a WHOIS lookup. Legitimate remote-first companies have owned their domain for years.
9. The compensation is "unlimited" or "as much as you can make"
Commission-only, no base, no leads provided. This is almost always MLM.
10. They can't answer "who would I report to?"
Every real job has a manager. If the recruiter dodges this question in the phone screen, the role is not real — or the org is chaos.
Five signals of a real employer
Equally important — here are the five signals that a remote job is worth investing your application in:
- A pay band posted in the required states (CA, CO, NY, WA, IL). Legal compliance is a proxy for operational maturity.
- A named hiring manager or team you can look up on LinkedIn.
- A published career page on their own domain with more than one open role.
- An ATS (Greenhouse, Lever, Workday) rather than a form to their Gmail address.
- A structured, multi-stage interview process with named stakeholders. Real companies invest hours per hire.
Get new remote remote jobs sent to your inbox.
We check the employer career pages in this article every day and email you the new openings — with the real apply link, not a repost. 4,988 live right now.
Free. Unsubscribe any time.
When in doubt
Run the company through:
- LinkedIn (headcount, tenure of team)
- Glassdoor (recent reviews, especially by ex-employees)
- BBB and Trustpilot for the consumer brand
- WHOIS for domain age
Five minutes of screening saves days of wasted applications — and thousands of dollars in scam losses.
Every job in the Jobs to Inbox weekly briefing is sourced from a verified employer's own careers page, not from aggregators — which is why the read rates are so high. If you want jobs that already passed this filter, here's where to start.