Over 2,400 fake job pages that impersonated companies from 13 MEA countries were discovered and uncovered by a Dubai threat intelligence and research centre – Digital Risk Protection. The jobs were created on social media and targeted Arabic speakers in the Middle East and Africa region.
The fake job pages created impersonated over 40 of MEA’s largest enterprises, publishing vacancies in Arabic and offering large salary packages.
Those who interacted with the job listing on social media were at risk of being victims of theft of social account credentials.
Scammers included links on the social media job listings that would lead the interested applicant to phishing pages where the social media user would be asked to input login credentials and passwords.
Companies from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Algeria were most frequently impersonated.
The scam was uncovered using AI technology, a highly accurate logo analysis and text recognition features.
This particular job scam was notable for two reasons, one being the number of fake pages created and a large number of targeted countries. Over 48 percent of fake profiles were created for companies in Egypt followed by organisations from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.
The scam was first observed to have begun in January 2022 and peaked in August when over 600 new pages were created.
Currently, there are still new scam pages being made on a daily. January 2023 has seen the highest, a number collectively more than November and December of last year.
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