New Week, New Headlines: Job Scams Get Sophisticated & Jarring Truths: Women's Health in Prime Working Years

Happy Detention Day Friends!

We recorded this on March 24th, which, is when the crew from The Breakfast Club headed to the library for detention. Little trivia for you.  And, March 24th is also the day, we jammed about the following topics:

Topic 1: Job Scams Get Sophisticated
Job scams are on the rise and getting more sophisticated.  From a CBS News Interview, LinkedIn's career expert, Catherine Fisher, we break down the cunning tactics of these digital-age con artists. From bogus UNICEF internships to AI-powered frauds on social media. It's nuts. We walk through the types of scams, how to spot these scams and the data you should never provide as a candidate (to, you know, not get scammed).  We also referenced the following: Consumer Affairs Article, Federal Trade Commission
Show Notes Updates- as of 4.15.24
Additional notes from ID.me: 

• We wanted to share that any attempt to hack ID.me is thwarted by ID.me's experienced security team, whose team members have numerous certifications in privacy and security program management. ID.me also meets the highest federal identity, privacy, and security for digital identity verification — including Identity Assurance Level (IAL) 2 and Authenticator Assurance Level (AAL) 2, as set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for all its identity verification pathways: self-service, video chat, and in-person. Online scams can trick people into creating an ID.me account with exposed information. ID.me encourages those who believe their ID.me account or personal information are compromised to notify us immediately so that the ID.me team can promptly address the issue.
• Show correction: In this episode we mistakenly referenced ID.me as a "government-run organization." We want to clarify that ID.me is not a government-run organization or agency. Rather, ID.me, a veteran-founded, veteran-operated digital identity company, is a trusted partner of 15 federal agencies and 40 state agencies across 30 states that offers streamlined login and identity verification.

Topic 2: Jarring Truths About Women's Health in Prime Working Years
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Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice. We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host or the management.

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Transcript

Mel: 0:00

You've probably seen this, francesca. I made $10,000 in one month. You can too. Oh, yeah, I've seen that too. My TikTok Instagram is filled with the side hustles, like I saw one the other day, that I can make up to $180,000 a year Sending in your poo. Oh, I believe it. Oh, my god, like farting a jaw. Yes, hi friend. Hi friend, how are you? I'm doing great. How are you? Great, great.

Mel: 0:39

A little cloudy over here in Portland, but we're full into spring, which is exciting. Same here. Same here Yesterday was raining cats and dogs, by the way. Do you know where that came from? The expression it's raining cats and dogs. Yeah, I do not. All right, and someone can correct me, but I feel like I heard this somewhere before, back in the Middle Ages or something, when roofs were like that thatchy grassy material. Pets, in order to stay closer to the sun, would lay on roofs to sunbathe and when it would rain, they would fall through the roof. Don't hold me to that fact, though. Someone probably just told me that and I bought into it, but anyway, I could. I love it, though. It works for me. We're going to stick with that. We're going to stick with that.

Mel: 1:24

And it's also detention day. Do you know what's detention day Like? Detention is in? Like you got a detention in school. Yeah, school detention. I know we're all like, oh, for two. What is that Fun next Sunday? Yeah, now, the breakfast club for Jen Uxers out there March 24th was detention, oh nice. Yeah, I did not miss a good John Hughes reference. Love it, love John Hughes, love it. I love Jake Ryan. Oh, jake Ryan, 16 candles right? Yeah, what a dream. Oh, it's your work friends. You're two HR friends with no filter getting you through all the work stuff.

Mel: 2:08

I'm Mel, hey, and I am Francesca, and we're back with New Week, new Headlines. Francesca, what are you talking about today? I want to talk about a new McKinsey report that dropped this week, talking about our women's crime, working years in peril. Women's health care has been neglected for decades and I want to talk about what that means for women at work. What about you, mel, love to hear that?

Mel: 2:31

I am talking about job scams and all of the job scams happening out there, how to spot them, how to protect yourself? Ooh, all right, let's do it. Job scams. I was watching CBS Morning News, as you do, and they had LinkedIn's career expert, catherine Fisher, on this past week and she was talking about how job scams have become one of the fastest growing frauds in the US, and I know it's pretty bad, but business and job opportunity scams have more than double over the past four years, according to the Federal Trade Commission, and it's increasingly climbing.

Mel: 3:18

In the climate that we're in, with layoffs, scammers have thousands of new targets happening with new college grads, who are generally green, and with new social media platforms like TikTok and with AI, it's just becoming rampant, and I'll give you a quick example, especially for new college grads, folks who are prepping to graduate this spring. One example was UNICEF internships. Right now, there's a scam that's been identified with UNICEF reps offering paid internships through email or social media, according to a Consumer Affairs article that I read, but they don't post jobs through email or social media, only on their official site. So, oh, that's like Because UNICEF is a legitimate organization, yeah, okay, you wouldn't think anything of it. In 2023 alone, there were more than 100,000 plus active scams that have been identified, and Americans have lost about $500 million to these scams.

Mel: 4:20

How did the scams work? What are these scams people out of? I'm going to share some common ones and you're probably going to be like Mel, no shit, okay. Are people really getting scammed by this? Yes, they are. Yes, yeah, they are.

Mel: 4:34

The chance of the side gig, the side hustle things outside of work have exploded working from home opportunities, the chance to be your own boss all these things right, all good things. But it's also created this avenue for scammers to get better at scamming people, because they're using real, legit opportunities to mimic in order to get you hooked and get what they want. So, look, job scams have existed as long as jobs have existed right, and in an article by Consumer Affairs, gary Guthrie in February noted that online job scams in particular, have been around at least since 2006, when Consumer Affairs first reported a careerbuildercom job scam where identities were being stolen through these career sites. So that's when that first started. That's why you see things like in LinkedIn and in D2, hey, does this look legit? Especially if you get a message from someone you don't know. You can easily report that stuff.

Mel: 5:35

Some examples of stuff that's been coming up more recently work from home job scams using language like be your own boss or they claim. You've probably seen this for Incheiska, I made $10,000 in one month. You can too. Oh, yeah, I have a similar to my TikTok Instagram spelled with the side hustles, like I saw one the other day that I can make up to $180,000 a year sending in your poo. Oh, I believe it. Oh, my God, like fart in a jar. Yes, yes, yes, what is happening in the post? Okay, I'll answer that to be true. That'd be great. Yeah, but it's not. Yeah. So there's that there are a lot of faith check scams happening where so it's a little twofold and it's so gross.

Mel: 6:19

But a job opportunity that might look legit and you apply, they tell you that you've gotten the. Typically if they move too quickly, like one interview and now you're hired and they, on the spot, complete your W-4, they'll send you a check to deposit first for your first paycheck, but then they'll ask you to send some money back because they purposely overpay you and they say, hey, we made a mistake, we've overpaid you, can you send us money back? And what happens is not only have they stolen your personal information, like your social security on the W-4 that you completed or, if you did a direct deposit, your bank routing information as well, but now you've sent them money back because they said they overpaid you. By accident, their check bounces and now you've paid them and you owe the bank money for the money that you've paid. So usually when the check deposits into your account, it shows that it's available and you might use that money to pay them back. And so now it's like threefold You're out this money in your bank account, they have your personal bank information and they have your social security number. Oh my God, number one yeah, I think most employees would be like oh they, I have a paycheck. This feels very legit. But they're preying on people who are desperate for work and it's an opportunity that's immediate and if you're trying to feed yourself or your family, I don't want anyone to feel shame if you've fallen for something like this because it feels legit. Exactly, I didn't expect it. Yeah, it's great. I think you've sophisticated.

Mel: 7:58

There are reshipping scams which, by the way, if someone ever asks you to mail something out for them unless it's your mom or like a loved one or a family member, don't do it when they're essentially saying we'll send you inventory, you repackage it for us, you send it back out. So they're sending you things. You have to throw out original packaging and receipts and then you ship it back out. So these are usually high priced goods, a big box of heroin, yeah, they can never f**k. You Close the portal. I don't know, but same as above. Literally the same logic as the airport If it's not your bag, do not touch it, don't touch it. Yeah, don't carry something for someone else, do not do it. The other is reselling luxury goods by saying, hey, we'll sell you luxury goods at a wholesale market price. You give your credit card or bank routing information to buy these luxury goods so you can become a reseller for that merchandise. They look like legitimate companies that will help you become a reseller of these goods, but then you never receive the luxury items and they drain your bank account or they've stolen your credit card. Yeah, I don't think anyone's selling lots of ton bags, except for LVMH.

Mel: 9:14

Yeah, nanny, caregiver, virtual personal assistant jobs happening as emails, texts, phone calls. It might look like it's coming from a legitimate place. This has happened to me before, actually, because I signed up on, indeed, 10 years ago and it's probably an old resume that I still have up there. So people will email that old email address and I still get it For these random things and you're like what is this? It's like emergency. We have this opening for virtual assistant or whatever and you're like one. That's not even my background, but two what? But this is happening quite often where it looks like a legitimate recruiters reaching out to you but they're not and the same they'll hire you yesterday and they're doing that whole bank scheme with the check that I just talked about.

Mel: 10:02

And then this one hurts my heart because there are legitimate things that exist out there for mystery shoppers, but mystery shoppers scams have become massive now. There are legitimate companies for this, but a lot now exists where they're like you need to pay a fee to become part of our network, you need to pay for it. No, you do not Look. If they're asking you to pay for something upfront to start your job, it's a scam and you need to walk away. And then the last one, which is also really bad, are these job placement service scams where they're posing as recruiters who are then saying hey, happy to place you with a company. I have a massive client list, but you need to pay for my services. And, having come from talent acquisition, I just want to let everyone know here that recruiters don't get paid by the candidate. They get paid by the employer who is paying for their services to find the right candidate. So if a recruiter agency is ever asking you to get paid, never pay for this immediately walk away. So how to spot a scam? And there's something in here that's terrified the shit out of me and I need to check it later. But people posing as recruiters we just talked about that Employers offering high paying jobs with little to no work being done.

Mel: 11:23

If it's too good to be true folks, it usually is applications that ask for your social security number, bank information or any credit card information. No, they don't need that. If they're using fake websites or emails and some are really hard to spot it's critical. Everyone views websites today and really looks for key things Like. I've seen examples that they showed where the original address, the legit address, has a W, but the scam address is two lowercase bs that are so tightly together, hard to spot yeah, that it looks like a W. They might change a letter for a number. But you need to scrutinize every single thing here and emails too.

Mel: 12:07

If they're saying click this link. If you get a text that says click this link to apply, do not do that. Go directly to the source. Go directly to the website. Check things out If they're asking you to purchase a ton of equipment. It's usually a multi-level marketing scheme. If they're asking you to pay upfront, if they're asking you to recruit other people, yeah, it is not legit guys. And if they're rushing you through the process, if you don't act fast, this is opportunity is gonna go away. We have other candidates, so we're making our decision. You need to respond within 24 hours. They're not for you walk away. That's a tactic.

Mel: 12:44

In this consumer affairs article, guthrie noted that the newest avenue is asking job seekers for their IDme login information. Do you know what IDme is? I have no fucking clue what the ID for me is. Now I'm like what? Wait, what Is this? Because I'm old, okay, you can tell me what it is. I'm not old. I didn't know what the hell this was either, but we probably are in this database, and it's not necessarily a bad thing that we're in this database.

Mel: 13:12

But what's happening is scammers are essentially asking people for their login information or to create one which gives over all of your personal information. So IDme is a government run website and it simplifies how individuals like you or I prove and share our identity online. It has over 100 million members and 70,000 new members joining every single day. They have partnerships with 31 states, multiple federal agencies and more than 500 name brand retailers. Checking my organ license Go ahead, I see a set. Look, we're probably all part of IDme. This is not to say you shouldn't be part of that. The Identity Theft Resource Center, otherwise known as ITRC, has said that they have witnessed a 545% increase in victims of this between December of 2023 and January of 2024 alone. That's in one line, folks, holy shit, yeah, let's go. Oh, my gosh. This is not financial advice by any means, but, as somebody who has had an issue with identity to be stolen, if you haven't already lock down all your credit bureau stuff, make sure that stops on lock.

Mel: 14:28

How to protect yourself, according to consumer affairs and the ITRC, be careful with how much personal information that you share in applications. Do not give payments. Do not provide bank information. No social security data One that I would have not thought of, but it makes sense. If your interviews are typically through Zoom or Skype, maybe Google Meet, those are standard, but if you're asked to download a third party app, that's a red flag. Yeah, so it's usually your personal information, so watch out for that. Yeah, if they try to initiate an interview through text or email but you didn't apply. They found your information on Indeed or LinkedIn. Or do not click any links. Do not share your driver's license with anybody. Do not share your IDme.

Mel: 15:22

Log in information to complete your application and really know the source of the job posting. Make sure you're doing your research and if you're doing a search in Google, you might want to add things like the word scam review, complain the Better Business Bureau to see if there's anything that's come in and if the employer is asking you for a finder's fee or administration fee or a background check fee, because that's another one that's happening right now too. I know, yeah, no, you never. That's all paid for by the company. You do not need to pay for that, absolutely not. That's paid for by the company. It's a scam. So, folks, use your discernment Really. Do do diligence on things that you're getting and you can report it to the ITRC and the Federal Trade Commission. We'll link to those in the show notes and if you've been scammed, you can speak to an expert advisor at the ITRC as well. That's included in the links we'll share in the show notes.

Mel: 16:20

So, look, everyone's smart, but none of us are immune from this kind of thing. So, given the numbers, we thought it would be a good reminder to cover job scams, totally sophisticated, with things like TikTok. There's nothing wrong with TikTok Social media as long as the internet's existed, social media we've seen all these types of scams happen in varying degrees. Right, but it's getting more and more sophisticated with the new AI mimicking people and you can't tell the difference. It's getting even more sophisticated. So just be on the lookout. If you're getting this stuff and if you have loved ones who are younger and just starting out in the world, then you might want to educate them on this too.

Mel: 17:05

I think it's the topic that is really personal for me and I think it should be personal for everybody, and it's certainly personal for 50% of the population because we're talking about women's health. There's a report that McKinsey dropped this week by two senior partners, quellen Elengrod and Lucy Perez, and they're talking about our women's prime working years in peril. Ooh yeah, interesting. There are probably dives very deeply into women's health care and the fact that it's been neglected for decades. We'll talk about that, but what they're also doing is dispelling some myths about women's health and suggesting ways to significantly improve health outcomes and the economy. It could potentially boost the economy by $1 trillion a year. There's a massive reason why we want to do this.

Mel: 17:53

But what I was really taken with in the article is the experience women go through, and when they go through it and how that might show up in work. So I'm going to go through the myths, I'm going to go through some of the causes for the gaps in women's health care and then I want to talk about what do we do about it, especially as it relates to women and work. Yeah, I love to hear it, because when you think about women's experience in the workplace, their prime years are what? 25 to 45, 50?, 55, yeah, yeah, and think about what women go through during that period in terms of their life. So a whole lot of stuff. So a lot of stuff. Yeah, when they're looking at women's health, the timeline that they're looking at is basically start to finish. So they're looking at women's health holistically, from birth to adolescence, through those working years, into retirement and then in older age.

Mel: 18:48

Myth number one is how we define women's health, because when we think about women's health and even the way we look at employee benefits around women's health maternally, we see some companies getting into things like menopausal care, which is great, right, yeah, but it's not just about those health conditions that impact women uniquely, right, I eat shit around the uterus. It's also around those things that impact women differently or disproportionately as well. Myth number two we often hear women live longer and therefore they're healthier, but the research shows that even though women live longer, they spend 25% more time on average in poor health than men do. Oh God, 25% more time in poor health. So just walking around feeling like garbage, Awesome. Myth number three the health gap happens primarily during the later years in life. So a lot of times people feel like, oh, once women start to get into menopause, that's where health starts getting iffy. That's where we start seeing this gap happening around this 25%. Not true what they have found? That 25% is happening straight up during women's prime working years. A few reasons for this gap.

Mel: 20:04

One, the science related to women's health. For the longest time, from a research perspective, women have been thought of as small men. Women weren't included at scale in clinical trials until 1993. Man, that's depressing. Well, it's depressing, but we know women experience the same diseases as men do differently. Here's a prime example of this that they give Women experience heart attacks differently than men.

Mel: 20:35

Most people think women think about a heart attack. The first thing that probably comes to mind is things like chest pain. But women yeah, that's not the same as women. It's always like nausea. They're higher, they need to be gunnapped, they need to lay down. I think they get arm pain even differently. Jaw pain yes, they're very different. One of the studies from a few years ago qualified this as a woman having seven times higher likelihood of dying upon showing up in the ER recentes a heart attack. Because we haven't researched how things impact women differently.

Mel: 21:10

Number three the investments in women's health are just piss poor. What is the percent of investment you think is in research and development of women's health? Give me a number. What do you think it would be? I think it's less than 10%. I'm not to be dired, but just given one. We're women. We've had our own experiences in the healthcare system. I think of even the recent article about the beauty and fashion influencer Jessica Petway, 36, died of cervical cancer because she was misdiagnosed as just having fibroids, because she was dismissed by doctors.

Mel: 21:51

I just think training around women's health, research around women's health, is abysmal. Yeah, it's abysmal. We know Menopause. We're still today in med school, we've been a day, if you're lucky, on menopause a day. Yeah, here's the money. Less than 5%, mel. Less than 5%. I almost said 5%. Less than 5%, it's set. Yeah, as a woman, just why can't this be better and why doesn't it matter enough? Perfectly sure, and it should. 4% of the population, more than half. We should want to care about this because we should want to have people not be suffering, right? But if we close that 25% gap, what that would mean is 1 trillion in GDP. It's about 75 million of what they call dailies or disability-adjusted life years. It would mean 137 million women in full-time positions by 2040.

Mel: 22:48

And this is the stat that I just couldn't get over. It basically represents seven days a year on average where women are suffering. Yeah, okay, tram, hello, hello, okay, granted move, show your hands. Oh Go, tell Victoria, that's on average. That also means that some women can experience all of those 70s in one year that sort of thing, by seven days. What does this have to do with the workplace? A lot of organizations have made great strides on gender-specific employee benefits, things like mat care. We're starting to see more on menopausal care. I think that's great, but the reality of the situation is, again, women experience those things and they also experience things like cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease, migraines, depression, diabetes. They're experiencing these things differently and women, again, are walking around 25% of the time more than men, with health conditions that are awful.

Mel: 23:45

Yeah, I have aura migraines and can speak to that, but it mimics the symptoms at times of having a stroke, like, literally, my speech will be slurred when I have a serious migraine and it's debilitating. Going to work like that just does not feel good. It doesn't Now things that we can do in organizations, like the policies we can put in place. It's going to take some time for the medical profession and for organizations to catch up and close this gap. In the meantime, I think this comes down to dailiness of conversations around giving team members, especially women.

Mel: 24:23

If you lead women to know that they may have very real debilitating things happening, that they need a day or two, they need a minute or two, collin, since when you have an aura migraine, I'm sure you don't want to have to take out short-term disability to have a day or two. I just want to be like, hey, I have a migraine, I'm going to be offline. Yeah, cool, no questions asked, I'm going to share something really personal, but I want to make a point here. I had a miscarriage and the next day went back to work. Oh, I'm so sorry. I am not unique in that at all, I know I'm not.

Mel: 25:05

There are times where we all men and women, everybody experiences things that are physically painful, mentally painful, emotionally painful, and I don't want to fucking talk about it. But I need a minute. I don't want to have to file for disability. I need a minute, right, and if this kind of stuff, where, like, do we rely on our humanity at work, as leaders, as managers, as peers, to understand that there's a gap here for women? There's an even bigger gap for women of color and to give people the minute they need? Yeah, it doesn't seem like that's a lot to ask.

Mel: 25:44

I really encourage everybody to go and look at this report. It's incredibly well researched. I think it might be one of those pinnacle pieces that really starts to change some of this conversation, because the way they put the data together is so thorough and obviously for me, I think, validated some feelings and also is causing me to think about how do we enable women to thrive and not suffer in the workplace. I'm here for it. I couldn't agree more. And yeah, let's tap into humanity a little bit.

Mel: 26:13

Yeah, we'll link to it in the show notes. They also did a podcast about it. I'll link to that as well, if you want to hear a listener and a reader. But yeah, looking forward to this gap closing and more, raise them. Babe. Friends, thank you for tuning into another your Work Friends episode and if you have something to share with us, please email us at friend at yourworkfriendscom or join our LinkedIn community at your Work Friends podcast and send us a direct message, and we're just thankful to have you here. So if you like what you hear and you think it might be helpful, share with a work friend or two. Take care, friends. Bye, friends, Bye.