PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Are you in the market for a better job? Or maybe you’re out of work and looking for an opportunity just to earn a living? With unemployment still high, many job-hunters can fall victim to scams. As 3-On Your Side Consumer Reporter Jim Donovan explains, time spent online searching for employment is often the time that the most vulnerable are targeted.

Job hunters know the feeling, spending hours in front of the computer, searching the internet for opportunities, clicking “send” on resume after resume. While on-line ads promise good pay and ideal working conditions more and more of them these days are linked to scams that take people’s money up front and fail to deliver on their promises.

The most common scams involve: Data entry from your home, envelope stuffing, product assembly, medical billing and mystery shopper opportunities. Clever websites can add an air of legitimacy to a scam. But the Better Business Bureau and Federal Trade Commission reminds job hunters that legitimate job offers shouldn’t cost anything.

Both the BBB and FTC tell consumers, don’t pay upfront for a background check, credit report or other administrative fees. They say be wary of unsolicited job offers in your email, clicking on links could corrupt your computer with spyware. Also, be careful about where you upload your resume. the personal information on it can make you a target for identity thieves. In fact more and more cases where the scam artists are using information from job applications as part of identity theft ploys. So you really have to limit the information that you share when responding to any job opening.

For more information visit:

http://business.ftc.gov/documents/inv02-looking-earn-extra-income-how-avoid-bogus-business-opportunity-offers

http://www.newyork.bbb.org/article/10-ways-to-spot-work-at-home-scams-21242

http://alaskaoregonwesternwashington.bbb.org/article/job-scams-24716

Reported by Jim Donovan, CBS 3