Beware of Scam Links Disguised as the PR & Job Opportunities by the Australian Government!

Many Sri Lankans are on the lookout for work or study opportunities, and Australia is one of the preferred destinations. Therefore, many phishing attacks are generated to target these aspiring candidates.

Let’s look at one such recent recurring message, claiming to be PR & Job opportunities in Australia in 2023.

Social Media Posts

A WhatsApp forward about Australian job and PR offers is spreading virally in Sri Lanka, claiming that the Australian Government is on the lookout for immigrants & International applicants who can fill the acute job shortage in the country and requests interested parties to visit a website link to avail of the offer, as seen below.

AUSTRALIA PERMANENT RESIDENCY and JOBS 2023 ( OPPORTUNITY)

The Australian Government is looking for immigrants & International applicants who can fill the Shortage of jobs in Australia. The Australian Government announces a 400% Number of Immigrants. This is an opportunity to work legally in Australia.

Australia has already increased the number of Immigrants from 35 Thousand to over 1million in the current year.

Benefits 99.9% Visa Sponsorship 99.9% Success Rate Labor shortages are available in all fields, all sectors, and all backgrounds

APPLY NOW https://bit-ely.com/australia-job2023

Fact Check

The message drew several red flags, and firstly, the landing page of the shortened URL led to a suspicious website (365clue.com/australia-permanent-residency-and-jobs) which does not have any connection to the Australian government website.

We inspected the viral link with many recognised scam detector websites, and all of these sites gave a very low trust index for the website link(365clue.com), signalling users to beware of high-risk phishing and scam activities. Evaluation from the scam detector’s website can be seen here. You can also evaluate suspicious scam links via such a validator. Scamdoc runs a similar service, and according to their analysis too, the website has a terrible trust index. The report can be read here.

We also checked this website’s details from WhoIs Domain Lookup, which indicated that the website was registered on the 28^th of May, 2022. So, it's clear that this is a newly created domain. The WhoIs report can be reached from here.

We request that netizens show extreme caution in approaching these suspicious websites and refrain from providing their data to similar fraudulent schemes and proceeding further.

Also Read: Was the Canadian Government Giving 450,000 Job Opportunities For Foreigners In 2022?

Only for verification purposes, we followed the steps and discovered that the promoted website link asks for details like your name, mobile number, address, email address, etc., and finally, requests to share their web link with social media groups, which is a tell-tale sign common to many other scams/fraudulent activities.

We also noticed that since a message with the same accompanying was viral in 2022, the Australian High Commission for Sri Lanka & Maldives published a clarification stating that even though the Australian Government had increased the number of permanent migration visas available in 2022-23 from 160,000 to 195,000 places, which is extra 35,000 permanent visas to address parts of the Australian economy experiencing severe shortages, always visit the Australian Government’s Home Affairs Ministry website to find authentic details about available visa options.

Furthermore, requesting the public not to fall prey to scammers, the Australia High Commission adds a list of reliable and official websites to follow PR & Job Opportunities in Australia, as seen below.

Messages carrying the exact text were also viral during 2022 in other regional countries, and this is a notice issued by the Bhutan Foreign Affairs Ministry, requesting users to beware of such scams.

Furthermore, we also found news reports of several job scams such as this, which were carried out in Sri Lanka recently to deceive the public in the name of the Australian Government’s campaign to attract skilled migrants.

Therefore, the Foreign Employment Bureau (SLBFE) also requests the public not to fall prey to these scams, and interested Sri Lankans are urged to visit the specified website of the Australian Government and apply for the relevant employment opportunities, as seen below.

ScamWatch, run by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), has also requested the public to be wary of such scams and requested to report similar Job & employment scams. They have also listed some of the common warnings related to such scams.

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Conclusion:

According to our investigation, we found out that even though the Australian Government had announced a campaign to attract skilled migrants to Australia to fill acute in some of the identified employment sectors, the viral social media posts are shared with a malicious web link to deceive the public and is no way related to the Australian Government or any other official party endorsed by the Australian Government.

Also, the Australian Government and Foreign Employment Bureau (SLBFE) request that the public not to fall prey to such scams and always refer Australian Government’s websites to seek details on PR or job opportunities.