That 'easy money' job text is booming - here's the one tell that gives it away

Employment scams are having a banner year, and one flavour in particular - the "task scam" - is among the fastest-growing frauds of 2026. The FTC's guidance fits in a sentence: that job offer text is probably a scam.

It usually opens on WhatsApp, Telegram or SMS: a friendly recruiter, remote work, flexible hours, and surprisingly good pay for trivial "tasks" like liking listings or approving product photos. You're onboarded into a slick app that even shows your earnings ticking up. Then comes the hook - to unlock bigger payouts you have to deposit your own money, usually in cryptocurrency. That money is gone. Reported losses to job scams jumped from $90 million in 2020 to $501 million in 2024, and task scams are a big part of the surge.

One rule defuses the whole thing: a real job never asks you to pay to work, and legitimate employers don't recruit by cold text with a crypto wallet attached. If a "task" or "training" requires a deposit, it's a scam - stop, and report it at reportfraud.ftc.gov.

This is a wallet scam, not a malware one, so the defence is knowing the pattern - worth passing on to anyone job-hunting or to younger family members. Tendvane keeps the PC side healthy; this one is about keeping your money where it belongs.