The very existence of all these phishing scams aimed at college students is really sickening.
No, I didn't get scammed -- I did enough research about the supposed employer in question to save myself that kind of trouble -- but the very fact that I even had the slightest bit of hope in the back of my mind that this could be legit, even when I was suspicious from the start, just makes it all the more discouraging when these things do turn out to be scams.
Like, these aren't phishing scams sent out to some random selection of email addresses like "Yo I'm a Nigerian prince who wants to give you in particular the chance to be rich by doing absolutely nothing!!" because that's so obviously too-good-to-be-true that only the dumbest would fall for it -- and beyond that, those 'Nigerian prince' scams are all about getting rich, making big money -- but that's not what these college scams are about.
Naw, the college scams prey on the broke, desperate, soon-to-be-up-to-their-eyeballs-in-debt crowd who are so desperately searching for a job and so heavily worrying that they won't be able to find a decent career after graduation. They aren't asking to get rich, just to get by -- and then they see, handed out on fliers in universities and even circulated through college email addresses -- that one opportunity they've been searching for: an easy, work-from-home job with no experience needed. It's just as too-good-to-be-true as the stereotypical Nigerian prince example, except that we're all so desperate and constantly reminded of the brutally competitive job market that, sometimes, hope and desperation overpowers rational thought.
Not to mention: it shouldn't have to be too-good-to-be-true. Supposed royalty emailing you personally and offering to make you rich? Yeah, I can see why that would be a red flag. But just being able to land a decent job? Is that really so much to ask??
I think it really says something that the "no experience needed" part of the flier was simultaneously what caught my attention and made me rather hopeful but also left me incredibly suspicious of it being a scam. Let's just think about that for a moment. The mere existence of an entry-level job that doesn't ask for any prior work experience is so fucking rare and unlikely that our brains almost unconsciously toss it in the same category as generous Nigerian princes and YouTube videos claiming to contain footage of aliens or ghosts: "probably fake".
And even though I may have been smart enough to avoid such a scam, the disappointment of realizing that it was a scam was still rather discouraging -- and then infuriating, once I took the time to think about it a little.
And let's not forget the fact that tons of other vulnerable college kids have probably already fallen prey to these same scams, and I don't particularly blame them. This isn't about getting rich off a mystery donor -- it's about taking the opportunity to get a fucking job which shouldn't be as rare as it apparently is. I can't quite fault anyone for being a bit too eager to forget to check this stuff.
tl;dr -- College students are in enough shit as it is. Anyone trying to make a quick buck by kicking them while they're down is seriously fucking disgusting. Just... go target stupid rich people or something. Goddamn.
