As universities break for the summer and graduates nervously enter the job market, online writing gigs are proving popular, particularly in a post-COVID world where many of us are opting for a “work from home” or hybrid lifestyle. We have been reporting on this topic for a while now — here’s what we’ve found this week. . .

Is WriteAppReviews a Scam?

The answer to this is that it’s in a bit of a grey area. It is a legitimate website and not a scam —  it’s even possible (in theory) to make money from it, while ScamAdviser awards what seems a convincing score of 96/100. On the other hand, you will most likely end up paying them and not receiving anything yourself.

It will cost $27 to access the business model, and then you’ll be heavily pressured to fork out another $97 for the “Express Pass VIP Area”. . . whatever that means. So from the outset, you’ll be down $124. Then, it turns out WriteAppReviews doesn’t actually pay you themselves. Rather, they provide you with a website on which you post your reviews — with the potential to make money via Google hits. This will be very, very difficult, however. You can see people’s negative experiences from the many poor reviews online.

In summary, we cannot say WriteAppReviews is a scam as it’s a legitimate business and website, however, you are unlikely to make an income from it. For this reason, we recommend to stay away. There are plenty of good options available for online writing gigs — users should take the time to research each platform thoroughly.

socialmatric[.]online & digitalemploy[.]online

We include these two together as they share identical websites — which is itself a major red flag. In addition, ScamAdviser awards a terrible score of 1/100. The websites claim to offer WFH social media jobs that pay $25 to $50/hour with no experience required! Sounds great, almost too good to be true (another classic red flag).

Coincidently, after completing a “quiz” on their homepage, users will generally end up redirected to our friend, WriteAppReviews. All this is highly suspicious. Furthermore, the domains are very recent (June 2022) and there is a complete lack of details and trustworthy reviews. Our advice, as above, is to stay away and look elsewhere for professional online writing gigs.

Let Trend Micro Help in Your Job Hunt

When it comes to finding work online, always do your research, be sure to reach out directly to official websites via a Google search, and get T&Cs in writing. You can use our FREE Trend Micro ScamCheck tool to detect employment scams with ease: it’s an all-in-one browser extension and mobile app for detecting scams, phishing attacks, malware, and dangerous links.

Check out this page for more information on ScamCheck.

Given you’ll be required to enter personal information on these kinds of platforms, ID Security will also ensure you’re never the victim of a data breach.

And as ever, if you’ve found this article an interesting and/or helpful read, please do SHARE it with friends and family to help keep the online community secure and protected.