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Along with the number of people going for work at home careers, the number of work at home scams are also increasing. Each year, thousands of people find out the hard way that opportunities that sound too good to be true usually are and millions of dollars are pocketed by these con artists.

You do not have to be among those unfortunate enough to fall for these so-called free legitimate work at home job opportunities. Your best defense is information. To protect yourself against scams, all you need to do is to become more informed. Ask the appropriate questions before taking the plunge in free legitimate work at home jobs. And if you do fall for one particular clever scam, take steps in knowing what to do if you are a victim of illegitimate opportunity.

Be More Informed

In order to avoid free legitimate work at home job scams, one of the first things you should become aware of are the types of business opportunities which frequently become the targets of scams.

The oldest of these scams is stuffing envelopes and/or assembling items in your home. Perhaps the commonest free legitimate work at home job ads you're going to find on the net are those that involve stuffing envelopes with information. There is another term for this - Direct Mail Service. Although not all direct mail services are scams, a lot of them are.

Often, with this type of free legitimate work at home job, you are required to send in a certain amount of money to the company running the ad and in turn, they will give you some information which you will later send out to a number of people. The thing about this is that the instructions that you receive turn out to be the same as the ad that you have responded to and its purpose is to bring in other individuals like yourself. You thus become an unwilling instrument in a scam that aims to rip off people who only want to get free legitimate work at home jobs.

Assembling items is a lot rarer but they just as susceptible to scams. The same as stuffing envelopes, this free legitimate work at home job opportunity requires you to send in some money for the training materials and instructions which you will need in order to do your job. The company will say that they have "standards" and in order for them to sell your product, they must reach these standards. So there you are working hard on meeting standards. However, when it's time for you to send the sample of your work, the company will immediately label it as "substandard" and will reject it. Of course, they will no longer be interested in your product since the real point of the exercise was to cheat you out of your money, your time, and your hard work.

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About the Author

Lucile Taylor is a contributor for Content-Articles.com. She is an expert in Corporation and LCC Partnership advice.