Scams That Software Developers Need To Be Aware of

Scam 1 - Technical Help Scam:
In this scam some fake and very intelligent profit seeking person will say that someone is in very big technical trouble and need your help, after that you reply with your charges, those persons will agree, then those persons will give a huge technical issue which normally takes days to solve but will ask to solve within few hours, now if you can't do the work within few hours then even though they have promised per hour charges , they will not pay you anything, they will block your number and stop all the communication, and if even if you solve the technical issue, these persons will take money from the main client and will not pay you a single rupee and block all kind of communication.

Scam 1 Solution: Only trust if this opportunity comes from a person you personally know from long time or before you have worked in any other projects with same person and got the money, or use escrow account like - ask the person to open that as an opportunity in any well-known freelancing site (but they will also charge a certain percentage, which hated by everyone the most), if any moment you feel this is a scam then halt immediately, that will save your time and effort.

Scam 2 - US / UK /EU / International Work Visa Scam:
This is "The Games Of Greed", the more greedy you are the more the chances that you are gonna fall for it.

There are people, who use people's greed to make money, yes, they have no other skills than to con greedy people, they will say there is an opportunity available for Software Engineers with more than $100000 USD per annum , and you want money right ? but to work there you will need visa as well, oh , they are very good visa consultant just pay $5000 (even more sometime), they will arrange everything .

You arrange the amount by any means (even selling own bike, own savings money, ask parents for the amount etc) to get the visa, and pay to that fake Visa consultant and that's it, they will block you in LinkedIn, in phone and every where possible. You lose your $5000.

Scam 2 Solutions: Apply for proper international jobs or acquire international clients, if you are skilled, and a valuable asset to team and company , they will fund your visa, your relocation charges, and of course you will get salary too, you need to work hard and smart way, there is no shortcut.

Scam 3- Training Requirement Scam:
If you are experienced software developer then you might be getting training requirements from many unknown person.

Your time is precious , you work day / night , you get very low time for your own, even that time if you agree to give commercial training to a company, and expect the payment will come in time.

But the twist, days after days passed but you don't get the money in account, you call the company but no one picking your call, you whatsapp but not seen (probably blocked), that's not a good experience, but common these days, have seen and talked with many other professionals who faced it and shared their experience with me, even faced same issue, that's why stopped giving training to training specific companies, because they are scammers.

Scam 3 Solution: Don't respond to or agree to these training companies, instead if a normal company directly contact you then you can take advance and you think they are seems genuine then only agree else don't.

Scam 4: Angry Client Scam:
In your career you will at least once will face this kind of scam.

Normally all of clients make contracts that's most favourable to them, of course they want win situation even it means you lose, until you are a big deal they will impose all the conditions possible, you are their target if you are a mid level developer and not senior developers as they probably already know about this.

Now comes, the main part, you need money, to have money, you need client, you are desperate to get the client, you agree to have any contract as you just need the money, here comes the angry client scam, these are the people who will come to you as client and will give you normal work, and you are super happy then they will give tremendous work pressure that you can't possible handle, and if it's a 1 month work they will want you to do that within a week or less, and if you can't they will blame you, threat you by saying that since you didn't able to deliver the work within the mentioned dates they lost more than USD $ 10,000 or more and now you will have to pay that amount by any means possible, they will start deliver threat by using lawyers and try to pressurize you to pay the money. Sometime their motto is that, they will pay the first month, then you will work for next 1 month, but they will have some financial problem so they will pay next month all together, and when the next month come, they will repeat their works again, then when it's start crossing limit to you and you complain they will give some impossible job to create this situation.

Scam 4 Solution: If you are a very rich, then pay the amount so that you get rid of issue. If you are intelligent, you will stay strong, ask for all the dues if they didn't pay yet, threat them back that you will reverse case against them for mentally pressuring you or not paying the due money. No matter what stay strong and don't pay them single rupee, they will bark and then will stop barking within few weeks. This is their strategy. What you should do is, if you understand or doubt this can happen, step out of the client as soon as possible. If legal email they send, ask them to come to India and have legal flight, they will not bother you anymore. It's an experience that will stay with you and make you strong if it ever happened to you and happen in future.

Scam 5 - International Opportunity Scam:
This scam are two type,

A) Work At Low Rate:

IN this method they will ask you to work in very low rate, so that within 1 year they will arrange a job in US / UK etc and you will get huge money once such happen, and you work for 1 year and you remind them their words they will say your work is not that impressive and they don't want to work with you anymore.

B) Pay $2500 or more or less To get International Job Scam:

Now this is a straight forward scam, they will ask you to pay $2500 or more or less than that and will guarantee a international job opportunity, and if you are greedy, lazy, rich and pay for it, then say bye bye to the money and bye bye to the person to whom you have paid it, as both not going to come back to you.

Scam 5 Solution: Just don't fall far it, all this scammers uses the same pattern, same words, easily identifiable. Never lower the rate that you are currently getting and aim for higher as you get more experienced. Never pay anyone to get job, instead invest that money in self development, learn new skills, join new courses , be a better version of yourself, upskill, reskill and never fall for scams.

Scam 6- Type "Interested" , "Yes", "I am In", "Email", "Phone number" scam:
This is quite normal in linkedin.

This is just plain and simple marketing skills they are applying, they are trying to fool you, they either want your email id or phone number for scamming you or marketing purposes, no proper recruiter will want you to type "interested" or mobile number instead of sending your resume. And do you really think a person can read or view your profile if there is more than 100's of comments , it's not possible, generally they want more profile views or want that post to go viral that's it.

Scam 6 Solution: Don't fall for it, think logically, use your engineer brain and if you are looking for job then apply from proper medium, or reach out to the recruiter or entrepreniour directly.

Scam 7 - Free Internship Scam:
The target's are mostly freshers who are not from IIT, NIT or such top tier college.

The first phase or say most challenging phase in life of a software developer is to get first job and if you are mediocre then that's a hell for you.

Here comes the evils, the already broke people who seeking the innocency of these freshers and utilizing them as workforce without paying anything, they will even try to make fun of your knowledge in order to break you and indirectly force you to do job for free.

Pattern as follow:
"Oh, you don't have much knowledge, learn work here for 6 months, if you learn well then we will start paying salary"

If you stay there for the whatever agreed period, you may or may not get salary, if they don't want to give you salary and not willing to continue, they will say that you learn nothing and they don't want you in team anymore. Even if they start you paying, that will be very less so you will leave anyway, in this process you just lost that many months.

Scam 7 Solution: Never ever join this kind of greedy, evil peoples, they are just trying to use you and after that they will throw you away, instead join product development companies if you like their idea, be it start-ups or established companies, see no one will hire you if you lack skills, and they will hire you if you have skills and potential. Learn new demanding skills, ready yourselves, work hard (if you are mediocre then work even harder ), work smart, try to give interviews as much as possible, soon you will be get selected for paid job and not fake free jobs.

Scam 8 - Income Guarantee Schemes Scam:
This one is on latest trend. Target is rich and middle class candidates.

Pattern: Simple yet not so simple pattern. These scammers knows marketing tricks very well, they have the perfect convincing power unless you are the clever one. They will say they can guarantee your income at least more than Rs. 10 Lakh per year but you will have to pay around just Rs. 1 -2 Lakh to join their course, and how good people they are , they will refund the money back if you don't able to gain at least Rs. 10 lakh per year.

Wait!! here's the twist, their goodness comes with few conditions:

1) Your attendance should be more than 96% in a online course 🤣

2) Your marks at the end of course should be more than 95% 😅

and few more bunch of conditions that you can never will be able to achieve and say goodbye to refund and say hi to regret.

Wow!! talk about some unique way to scam, and more interestingly their posts goes viral just like anything (Greed wins over common sense)

Scam 8 Solution: Use common sense and brain a little bit, use the money for good online technical courses, learn more on new technologies, make yourself market ready, and try interview in companies to get job, don't assume that they will come and invite you to job unless you are a big deal, so become a big deal instead by improving yourself, that will go very long.

Some good online training sites are below:

A Cloud Guru

Linux Academy

Linkedin Learning

Udemy

Conclusion:

Don't take action without giving detailed thought.

Normally scammers pressurize you to take action quickly so that you can't get enough time to think. Reach out to more senior persons to get their suggestions or friends to take action and never fall for such scams.

Thanks for reading this post till the end!

Comments

[Jean-Michel Plourde]

In the past year, there is an increase in the "Fake president" scam. Someone impersonate the president of a company and calls an employee urging them to make a money transfer to an account for some business reason.

[Sandip Das]

True, And now tools like deep fake and other sophisticated tool it's a lot easier for the scammers.