IN SHORT: The oil and gas company TotalEnergies only advertises jobs on its official website and its verified Facebook and Twitter pages – not on an amateur-looking site that asks for personal information.
An amateur-looking website offering jobs at TotalEnergies, a multinational oil and gas company, is getting social media attention.
*ATTENTION! ATTENTION!! ATTENTION!!! TotalEnergies Oil and Gas company is Recruiting both Skilled and Unskilled Labour with good Salary Payment. It is no longer news. APPLY NOW,” reads a recent Facebook post with a link to the website.
The website’s home page is headed: “TOTAL ENERGIES RECRUITMENT 2023.”
Poorly written text below reads: “TOTAL ENERGIES is recruiting both Skilled and Unskilled Labour. Every Individual of all Nationalities can Apply Applicants are to fill the form bellow and click on Apply.
It includes an “application form” that asks for personal details such as name, phone number, email and the country of residence.
The link to the site – with the URL totalenergiesrecruitment.apply-now.xyz – has been posted on public Facebook groups with thousands of members.
It appears here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
But are the job offers, and the website, legit? We checked.
Stealing valuable personal information
When Africa Check first clicked the link, our antivirus program warned that it was “malicious”. We nevertheless opened it to find more about the offer.
We deliberately left the “application form” blank and clicked “APPLY NOW”.
Suspiciously, we were still informed that our application had been received, allowing us to proceed.
The next stage required us to validate our name – which we had left blank in the previous stage – and indicate our level of education. After filling in a random name, a message popped up congratulating us that we were qualified to work in the company.
But like many other scam sites Africa Check has debunked before, we were required to share the website with five groups or 15 friends on WhatsApp.
Completing this step was the only way to get to the “appointment” page.
The scam may be an attempt to steal people’s valuable personal information.
The “skilled and unskilled” jobs don’t appear on the careers section of the company’s real website. The website’s URL is totalenergies.ke.
In a reply to a Facebook question about recruitment on 26 November 2022, TotalEnergies said that all its vacancies are advertised on its website, as well as its official and verified Facebook and Twitter pages.
To help protect yourself against online fraudsters, read our guide to Facebook scams and how to spot them.
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