Information circulating across social media platforms, best portrayed through this link web message, claims that WHO is offering jobs to help fight coronavirus.
The World Health Organization remarked on the would-be recruitment, labelling it as fake news. Moreover, the sheer lack of any basic functionality on the site in question is reminiscent of fraudulent websites, clearly not consistent with the standard of the WHO’s call for job applications.
Full Text
One significant impact of Covid-19 on the world today is the widespread layoffs across varied sectors. This common misfortune has rendered many people jobless, giving rise to an overflow of job seekers who, if not carefully guided, may fall victim to fraudulent schemes. While some of these job offers can be outrightly marked as fake, some of them appear genuine enough to be ignored, especially by persons desperately in search of jobs. One such appealing solicitation for job applications is the recent call for applications for jobs to help fight coronavirus via a link web message attributed to WHO.
The said jobs with the application deadline of July 31st, 2020, requires no experience from applicants for the task the announcer describes as “SMS sending JOB” which will earn candidates $5-$100 daily for working within 2-3 hours every day from the comfort of their homes. To access the job, the website requires the user to respond to a four-level question which includes:
- Provide Your Details.
- Answer Simple Questions
- Share on Whatsapp
- Verify
The third stage is the most pertinent; it requires the user to share its response on WhatsApp to a long list of users for them to have access to the job.
Traction
An analysis of the website on CrowdTangle revealed that the sites have garnered over 89 interactions across different platforms, and Linktally, a web tool that checks how many times a link is shared across social media platforms also showed that the website covered 7,090 shares across WhatsApp within May/June 2020. The predominance of this claim makes it rather attractive to further scrutiny, as it may mislead many if it turns out to be a dubious scheme.
Verification
The World Health Organization is liable for overseeing the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic, but is it offering these acclaimed jobs?
To accurately respond to this query, we reached out to the World Health Organization via phone call and later through email, but all efforts proved futile as they are yet to respond. Nonetheless, the World Health Organization in Uganda alerted the general public on its official Facebook page to disregard the job offer because it’s fake. The commission further pointed out that WHO will only post job opportunities on www.who.int
Similarly, another scam alert on the WHO’s website, warns people to “beware of criminals” who offer jobs and other things as representatives of the organization.
More Indicators…
Further, a study of the website reveals it to share no relationship whatsoever with the World Health Organization. The infrastructural layout of the link lacks basic makeups of a regular website, i.e. contact us, about us, categories, or even a label.
Also, even after making multiple referrals on WhatsApp, users never attain the last verification stage as inferred by the site. This scheme is typical of phishing websites that are usually permeated with installed root pop-up ads that spawn traffic through disingenuous projects. Worse still, such websites engage in the extraction of users’ data and financial details for nefarious purposes.
Conclusion
The site lacks credibility for the claims it has made. The World Health Organization is too standardised to base its recruitment procedure on a site that lacks basic website features. Finally, the apex health organization through her Ugandan chapter also dismissed the claims on Facebook. As always, this fact-check would be updated upon access to new information.
