{"id":12135,"date":"2022-08-20T10:04:44","date_gmt":"2022-08-20T09:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/?p=12135"},"modified":"2022-08-20T10:04:46","modified_gmt":"2022-08-20T09:04:46","slug":"fraudulent-website-poses-as-nerc-recruitment-portal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/fraudulent-website-poses-as-nerc-recruitment-portal\/","title":{"rendered":"Fraudulent website poses as NERC recruitment portal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Claim: <\/strong>A viral WhatsApp message claims Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) is recruiting.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Our findings show there\u2019s no ongoing recruitment by NERC and the recruitment portal linked in this message is not trustworthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full Text<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Recruitment and job offers continue to be exploited by misinformation peddlers to defraud, harm or steal information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, a viral WhatsApp message which claims the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) is conducting a recruitment exercise was sent to DUBAWA for verification. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This message contained a link<\/a> described as the recruitment portal for the commission\u2019s 2022 recruitment exercise.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Screenshot of the WhatsApp message.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Verification<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

DUBAWA first opened the link contained in the WhatsApp message as this led to a website, recriutment.online<\/a>. The wrong spelling of recruitment as \u201crecruitment\u201d in the website address was the first red flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We followed the registration process, which was divided into three phases. The first phase requires applicants to enter details like their name, phone number, age, educational level and state of origin.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second phase requires applicants to answer a few questions, while the final phase tasks applicants to invite friends and family before their recruitment form is available. This is a practice common with fraudulent websites.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Screenshot of the registration page<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We conducted a keyword search which led to a disclaimer notice<\/a> by the commission on similar false recruitment adverts that have been in circulation. These adverts, according to the disclaimer, request employment processing fees.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also found out that while it is true, the commission had earlier in June put out a recruitment notice on its Twitter account<\/a>, this exercise expired on July 15, 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The portal address used for this recruitment was \u201ccareers.nerc.gov.ng<\/a>\u201d, different from the one provided in this message.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Screenshot of NERC Twitter post on its recruitment in June.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\" <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

image of the recruitment notice.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We visited the recruitment website provided by the commission and saw a notice on the welcome page that its 2022 recruitment exercise is closed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Screenshot of NERC recruitment website.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We then analysed the link contained in this WhatsApp message on ScamAdviser, a reliable online tool that dictates scams and rates the trustworthiness of websites.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This showed several indicators that the website may be a scam, giving the site a trust score of 1\/100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Screenshot of ScamAdvisor\u2019s result.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our findings show there\u2019s no ongoing recruitment by NERC. The recruitment portal linked in this WhatsApp message is not trustworthy and is different from that of the commission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, a viral WhatsApp message which claims the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) is conducting a recruitment exercise was sent to DUBAWA for verification.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"hannibal_claim_source":"","hannibal_source_label":"","hannibal_card_color":"blue","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_bluesky_share_type":"","_mastodon_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[120,1571],"tags":[115,347,3541,3542,3543,1752,1558],"verdict":[],"ppma_author":[1106],"class_list":["post-12135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-fact-check","tag-fact-check","tag-featured","tag-nerc","tag-nigerian-electricity-regulatory-commission","tag-recruit","tag-recruitment","tag-recruitment-requirement"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8R6dE-39J","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":1106,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"lois-ugbede","display_name":"Lois Ugbede","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Lois.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Lois.jpg"},"author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/NERC-960x787-1.jpg?fit=960%2C787&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12135"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12143,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12135\/revisions\/12143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12135"},{"taxonomy":"verdict","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/verdict?post=12135"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=12135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}