About CheckJobScam
CheckJobScam is a free tool that checks whether a job posting is a scam. Paste any job ad, WhatsApp message, or recruitment email, and it scans for known fraud patterns.
Why this exists
South Africa's unemployment rate is 31.4% (Stats SA, Q4 2025). Millions of people are searching for work, and scammers exploit that desperation. Fake agencies, WhatsApp schemes, and advance-fee traps take money from people who can least afford to lose it.
We built this because job seekers are targeted precisely because they lack resources. Charging for protection would exclude the people who need it most.
What we check
Within 30 seconds, our system analyses a job posting against known fraud indicators:
How the risk score is worked out
Every message goes through the same three passes, and the score is the combination of them. Nothing about it is a black box.
- Pattern matching. The text is checked against the fraud indicators listed above: fee requests, untraceable payment methods, foreign numbers, free email addresses on corporate offers, links that do not go to a company's own careers page. These are drawn from scams reported to us and from published warnings by the organisations being impersonated.
- The reports database. Any company name, phone number or email address in the message is checked against every scam reported here by other job seekers. A match against something already reported raises the score sharply, because that is evidence rather than inference.
- Language analysis. A language model reads the message for the structure of a scam approach: unearned urgency, a salary outside the market rate for the work described, an offer made without an interview, or a hiring process that never leaves WhatsApp.
A high score means several of these fired at once. A low score means none of them did, which is not the same as the job being real: see the limitations below.
The scam pages are published under a stated rule rather than at our discretion. A real organisation whose name is being misused gets a page after one report, because the warning concerns the impersonator. A company accused of running a scam itself needs at least two independent reports, so that a single mistaken report cannot publish an accusation against a real business.
Our limitations
We're a tool, not a guarantee.
- We can't verify every company exists
- New scam patterns emerge constantly
- Some legitimate opportunities may trigger warnings
- No tool replaces good judgment
Always use CheckJobScam as part of your verification process, not as the only step.
Resources
Our blog has plain-language guides on recognising scams, verifying companies with CIPC, finding legitimate job boards, and reporting fraud. We also maintain an updated list of reported fake recruitment agencies.
Who we are
CheckJobScam is built and maintained in Gauteng, South Africa by Tapiwa Kambanga, a software engineer. It was started after seeing how many people in our own communities were losing money to fake job offers, and it is run independently: it takes no money from recruiters, job boards or any company named on the site.
The government vacancy pages are read directly from the Public Service Vacancy Circular that the Department of Public Service and Administration publishes every Friday, and every vacancy page links back to the circular it came from so you can check it against the government's own PDF. The scam pages are built from reports sent in by job seekers. Neither is written by hand, and neither is guesswork.
Contact
We read every message, though we may not respond individually to all reports.