Tasks scam are surging, with a year over year increase of 400%. So I guess it should have been no surprise when I was contacted by a task scammer on X recently.
Task scammers prey on people looking for remote jobs by offering them simple repetitive tasks such as liking videos, optimizing apps, boosting product interest, or rating product images. These tasks are usually gamified—organized in sets of 40 tasks that will take the victim to a “next level” once they are completed. Sometimes the victim will be given a so-called double task that earns a bigger commission.
The scammers make the victim think they are earning money to raise trust in the system. But, at some point, the scammers will tell the victims they have to make a deposit to get the next set of tasks or get their earnings out of the app. Victims are likely to make that deposit, or all their work will have been for nothing.
So when the task scammer contacted me on X to offer me a nice freelance job, I was keen to see where it would take me.
Beginning the message with emojis, Birdie started the chat…
“[emoji intro] Hello, I am a third-party agency from the UK, specializing in providing ranking and likes services for Booking+Airbnb hotel applications. The company is now recruiting freelancers worldwide. You only need a mobile phone to easily get it done, and the time and location are flexible. The daily salary is 100-300€, and the monthly salary of formal employees is 3000-10000€. Note (this article is not suitable for students under 22 years old, and African and Indian employees cannot be hired due to remittance issues) For more details please see the WhatsaPP link: [shortened bit.ly URL]”
In this case, I was asked to contact the scammer on WhatsApp, but I’ve also seen the same campaign asking the victims to reach out on Telegram.
The Telegram invitation was a bit more limited (European and American female users only) but extended to a larger group of 150 accounts on X. What the ones that reached out to me had in common was that they all found my profile on X. Mind you, my profile is not some honeytrap, it clearly says I blog for Malwarebytes.
So, last week I was up for some distraction and decided to follow up on the WhatsApp invitation which was still live. I reset an old phone to factory settings and bought a burner SIM card. With that phone in hand, I set up a Gmail account and installed WhatsApp. I added Birdie Steuber to my contacts with the phone number I found by following the URL. Then I reached out asking if they still had openings.
The bait was taken within minutes: hook, line, and sinker.
So, Birdie is actually Tina from Sheffield in the UK. The job is available and does not require any special skills or experience. Tina tells me all you need is internet access and you can start working for booking.com.
Next is a long-winded explanation of what the job entails with another mention of the fortune you can make. I suspect the explanation is meant to be slightly confusing, knowing the general population would be embarrassed to ask for a better explanation and just will go ahead and carry out the tasks.
More explanations about the job are followed by a quick query whether I will be able to buy USDT, the “hottest cryptocurrency in the world” as Tina described it. (It isn’t.)
Tina then asks me to create an account on a fake booking.com website.
Here’s that site.
Once I’d set that up, Tina set me up with a training account to learn the tasks. The actual tasks consist of clicking two buttons labelled “Start task” and “Submit” which gets mind-numbing really quick. But, hey, I was wasting a scammers’ time, so it was worth it.
That training account had a balance of over 1,000 USDT, probably to make the victim even more interested.
What happened next is likely a demonstration of another tactic the scammers will use to get people to deposit more USDT: A lucky order!
I was shown a prompt that I had run into “a 4% lucky order”, which Tina called a merge task that rendered a 4% commission.
Next followed an elaborate explanation on how Tina had to top up the balance to make up for the negative “Pending Amount” and asked me to contact customer support for instructions.
But to my surprise this was not what I was asked to do the next day when we continued our conversation. However, Tina quickly revealed how they were expecting to get 100 USDT from me.
“I forgot to tell you, it takes 100usdt to complete a new round of 40/40 orders to reset 40 new orders. Because 100usdt is to optimize the hotel 100usd reservation fee. Once you complete the 40/40 order task you can withdraw all funds. This is to help the hotel increase the number of real bookings and exposure to earn commission income. The commission income per order is 0.5 per cent. 100usdt will probably get 40-60usdt after completing the 40/40 order task.”
After I completed my first 40 tasks, I was shown this notification letting me know I had reached the maximum number of tasks for the day, at which point I was expected to top op my account at my own expense.
Once I convinced Tina we had purchased 100 USDT, I was told to contact customer support for instructions.
The instructions were similar to the ones I received a day earlier. But at this point I had to terminate because I didn’t want to give the scammers any actual money.
Checking the balance on the account numbers they provided me with during our conversation showed there are likely others who are handing over money. And they very well may have many more accounts.
These scams are likely designed to be confusing. The actual tasks were nowhere near as difficult as the explanation of what the job entailed.
In the end I revealed to Tina that I was the one that wrote an article about task scams, but Tina did not give up that easily. She kept trying to convince me there was money to be made.
If you’d like to read the whole conversation I had with Tina you can find it here.
How to avoid task scams
As I pointed out, all the task scam invitations I received came to me in the form of Message requests on X. So, that’s a good place to be very cautious. Once you know the red flags, it is easier to avoid falling for task scams.
- Do not respond to unsolicited job offers via text messages or messaging apps
- Never pay to get paid
- Verify the legitimacy of the employer through official channels
- Don’t trust anyone who offers to pay you for something illegal such as rating or liking things online
It’s also important to keep in mind that legitimate employers do not ask employees to pay for the opportunity to work. And as with most scams, if it sound to good to be true, it probably is.
If you run into a task scam, please report them to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
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