Indeed recruiter text scam: I responded to one of the “job” messages. It got weird quickly.

Hi there! Sorry to interrupt. I’m from Indeed. We’re currently recruiting remote product testers (U.S.-based). This role lets you earn $50–$400 per day by spending just 60–120 minutes daily testing and reviewing new products or services online.

It was not the first time I’d been offered such a plum appointment. And it certainly was not the most persuasive-looking proposal. This one came from an iMessage account with a +63 country code—the Philippines, which has certain associations with digital scammery—and arrived in the form of a group chat, with two other unfamiliar numbers. Despite our apparently exceptional individual qualifications, they hadn’t even bothered to single us out with separate messages.

Which is all to say: In the annals of what seems to be one of the lowest-effort scams currently running rampant across America, this felt like an especially low-effort attempt. One of the members of our group chat, with a 571 area code, had the good sense to leave the conversation immediately. In any other case, I would have also reported the message as junk and gone on, mildly concerned about how my number had been acquired until the next, near-identical text proposition rolled in, probably within the next day or two.

But this time, I wondered what was actually on the other side of this obvious scam campaign. How could this possibly be working? What were they after? Who could be falling for such an entreaty, one that requires a substantial misunderstanding of online job postings, of the internet, of contemporary employment? And then I realized: The answer should probably be me.

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