Work at Home Entrepreneurs: How to Tell Legitimate Home Jobs from Scams

How to Tell Legitimate Home Jobs From Scams
Opportunities touted as "legitimate" home jobs are usually anything but legit.
By Laureen Miles Brunelli, About.com Guide
http://workathomemoms.about.com/od/workathomescams/a/scamhub.htm

When getting started working from home, figuring out which are legitimate home jobs and which are work from home scams can be tough. As you cull through the many Internet job postings and ads, a pattern of deception becomes clearer, which in turn makes the truly legitimate home jobs easier to spot.

You begin to learn to spot the work at home scams, in part, because of the sameness of all their pitches.
So to find the legitimate home jobs and avoid the scams follow these tips:

•Use common sense. Think about the logic of an opportunity from the other side. How would the promoters of the opportunity make money if they are paying you so much for so little work? Also if a company's marketing strategy is primarily based on seeming legitimate, that is likely because it is offering a work at home scam...or at the very least a poor money-making opportunity. That's why any job that promotes itself in search engine ads as a "legitimate home job" most likely is not legitimate.

•Do your homework. Do not send money to any organization without thoroughly checking it out. Keep in mind that most legitimate companies do not charge job applicants and that business opportunities are never risk-free.

•Know how to spot the work at home scam. One tricky scam technique is to set up a whole website dedicated to revealing work at home scams and then funnel people to the few "legitimate" home jobs, which, of course, are not legitimate. But there are so many other tricks so read on for more scams.

•Know what the typical work at home scam are. While the work-at-home scammers are always coming up with new schemes, they tend to be variations on a few themes. Some of the opportunities listed below can be legitimate home jobs, but often they are so be very careful with any of these. And some you should always avoid.

•Direct Sales or Multilevel Marketing (MLM)
•Pyramid Schemes - Always avoid!
•Business Start-Up Kits
•Anything Involving Cashing Checks/Wiring Money - Always avoid!
•Home Assembly/Envelope Stuffing - Always avoid!
•Becoming a Product Re-saler or Wholesaler
•Stock Trading Systems - Always avoid!
•Directories of Telecommuting Jobs or Businesses
•Taking Online Surveys
•Mystery Shopping
•Data Entry/Call Centers (Some are legit but, the lure of these jobs is used to sell bogus start-up kits and other scams.)

•Avoid job opportunities found on advertising on search engines and many websites. Keep in mind that truly companies hiring for legitimate home jobs, like any other employer, are looking for qualified, reliable people to do the work. Screening applicants is a time-consuming process. So those casting a wide net by using Google or search engine ads are not as likely to be legitimate.

•Don't pay for opportunities. And in the real-world workplace, employers don't charge employees to work for them. And there are so many free resources like this list of legitimate work from home jobs by industry. Scams, posing as "legitimate business opportunities" will ask for money. The pitch is business are expected to have start-up costs. However, true businesses are typically not simple exchanges of unskilled labor for payment, as in home assembly and envelope-stuffing schemes. And a real home business is developed over time with careful planning and research, not purchased online sight unseen.

•Report scams. If you suspect that you have been scammed, report it immediately. Contact your bank if you've given out financial information and report it to your state's attorney general or any number of other authorities. Read more about how to report a scam.

Getting Started Finding Legitimate Home Jobs

When getting started searching for work from home jobs, look to your own skills first. There are many careers for work at home moms, but most start with skills gained in the external workplace.

Problem is that some people, who may be just starting in the workforce, may not have those skills. Or some are coming from a career path that is not easily transferable to the virtual workplace.

However, there are companies that hire work at home employees in jobs requiring a high school education or less. And the skills gained in some careers that can't be done from home, like nursing or other jobs in the medical field, can actually be used in home-based jobs like medical transcriptionists or call-center nurses.

Disclaimer: Sponsored Links and Ads on this site for jobs or business opportunities are not endorsed by me. They are automatically generated based on the content of the page. What you should know about Sponsored Links and Ads

MY THOUGHTS

these scammers are all over the net.  never never pay for any job.

Do you want to be a work-at-home mom?

Work at Home Moms: Decide if It's Right for You
http://workathomemoms.about.com/od/gettingstarted/ss/gettingstarted.htm

So you think that you want to join the ranks of successful work at home moms who make money but stay home, but you have some questions:
•How so I avoid work at home scams?
•Where do I find work at home jobs that pay well?
•How do I know if I'd like being a work at home mom?

All good questions. As work at home moms who've done it know, it's tough to go from working outside the home to a home-based job. Look here for a step-by-step plan for work at home moms who just getting started.

The first step to joining the ranks of successful work at home moms is not finding a job or starting a business. It is taking a long hard look at yourself, your family, your employer (if you have one) and your resume and deciding if being a work at home mom is what you want.

Think about whether you have the personality traits of work at home moms, what you'd like to gain from working from home and what you might have to give up. Then consider these:
•Work at Home Moms Benefits
•Work at Home Moms Drawbacks
•Family Ground Rules for Work at Home Moms
•Getting Back to Work After Pregnancy

There's no single way for work-at-home moms to be successful. There are many careers for work at home moms. Do some research and take a look at how other work at home moms manage. Perhaps, you could
•telecommute the job you already have,
•become a consultant or freelancer,
•start your own business,
•find a new telecommuting job in your field of expertise or
•dive into something entirely different.

Whether you're in the workplace now or you're a stay-at-home mom, the best place to start is with your own resume. If employed, can you negotiate a flexible work schedule that includes working from home?

If you've already left the workforce, look back at your last job. Network with your former co-workers. They may know of openings or freelance work that could be done from home. Search national job listings for that type of work with "telecommute" or "work at home" as additional keywords.

If your skill set or current career is not a good match for working at home, consider breaking out into a new field. Online learning is one approach. Starting a home business is another. If you do opt for a new career, keep in mind that you may need to hone your skills in a traditional workplace before becoming a home-based worker.

You've probably figured out by now that no work/home situation is perfect. But to get as close as possible to your own ideal, you and your family must set priorities. For work at home moms this means, breaking down the reasons to work at home into two groups: reasons to work and reasons to work from home, then rank them.  Here are a few, but you may have more.

Reasons to work:
•Financial need/security
•Career advancement
•Save for retirement/college
•Personal fulfillment
•Pay debt

Reasons to work from home:
•Spend more time with kids
•Eliminate commute
•Save money on childcare
•Leave unpleasant work environment
•Reduce stress

As you look at job possibilities for work at home moms, think about how they fit with these priorities. While you're setting priorities is a good time to review the drawbacks of working from home. Most work-at-home moms don't start out with a full-time telecommuting position right away. The work-at-home lifestyle is usually something you build over time. In fact, you may need to build up your savings first. Plan to start small. If you're moving from the office to telecommuting, maybe try just a couple days a week at first to see how it works for you and your employer. And, of course, if you're building a business that takes time.

•Child Care - Figure out how much and what kind of childcare you'll need.
•Ground Rules - Adjusting to working from home can be a difficult transition for you and your family. Clear rules and expectations can ease the way.
•Home Office - Find a place of your own, somewhere within your house, and set it up with all the home office essentials.
•Organization - Systems for organizing for both life and home may have to be created or tweaked to make working from home go smoothly.
•Building a Nest Egg - Starting small can mean a reduction of income in the short term, so you must plan for this.

If after mulling all your options and thinking out the practical aspects of becoming a work at home mom, you've decided to start looking for a work-at-home job, then here are some job listings for work at home moms.

•About.com's Job Search - Search this database of national job listings for your field of work with "telecommute" or "work at home" as additional keywords.
•Companies Hiring for Work at Home Jobs - Alphabetical directory lists companies hiring people to work from home in fields ranging from customer service and data entry to PR and travel.
•Resources for Finding a Work-at-Home Job - Alison Doyle, About.com's Guide to Job Search, gives tips on finding legitimate jobs to do from home as well as list employers.
•Find a Freelancing Writing Job - About.com's Guide to Freelancing maintains this listing of job sites for freelance writers and editors.
 •List of Work-at-Home Call Center Jobs - These companies hire home-based call center agents.
•Determine a Work at Home Job is Legit - Many ads and job postings targeted at work at home moms are scams. Know how to tell what's for real.
•Telecoa's List of Companies that Use Virtual Call Centers - Nonprofit organization maintains a list of companies that hire work-at-home agents for their call centers.

But do your research and be sure opportunities are legitimate. Learn how to spot a work-at-home scam.

MY THOUGHTS

i am seriously looking into work at home opportunities. no traffic, more time for family,less stress (?). i'm sure this will work.

why work from home scheme (telecommuting) will not work

Telecommuting -- why it will never work
The home office is not the best use of a company's workforce and seldom helps the bottom line
By Howard Levitt, Postmedia News
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Telecommuting+will+never+work/3716819/story.html

Working from home or, more poignantly, "not" working from home is the biggest boondoggle in the employment marketplace.

Lobbying groups react with outrage to this suggestion. And no wonder, in addition to their inherent conflict of interest, teleworking has become politically correct. Worse, as employers move toward flexible working arrangements to accommodate the participation in the workforce of women, single parents, the disabled and retirees, its usage is increasing.

Yet, when employers analyze their bottom line, they find that teleworking seldom provides value.
That should not come as a surprise for several reasons:

NO CROSS-POLLINATION
Teleworkers are unavailable to exchange ideas with their colleagues at meetings, beside the water cooler or over lunch, let alone integrate with the team. However, the more meaningful relationships you have with co-workers, the more you are relied on for your valuable input. This problem is exacerbated when supervisors and co-workers leave, and you need to develop relationships with new ones.

OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND
When there is a project to be assigned, managers first consider the person immediately available. In my experience, most teleworkers become under-utilized, in part, because employers stop assigning them meaningful work because they are not in the office. Increasingly, they miss the opportunities their coworkers at the office enjoy.

CORPORATE CULTURE
Increasingly, successful organizations have distinct cultures that enable them to succeed. Employees who seldom are in the office, cannot become familiar with their employer's style and values.

NO INSIGHT
It is difficult to produce good work if you don't understand your company's imperatives. Personal interaction with a supervisor provides the facility to understand the employer's needs, direction and personalities.

UNAVAILABLE
Even diligent teleworkers lack immediacy and reliability when decisions are made and work is assigned. In many cases, I have represented clients who terminated a teleworking arrangement when the employee more than once failed to answer the phone and often did not return urgent business calls for hours.

NO SUPERVISION
Not all employees are self-motivated. Some require monitoring, at least occasionally. In many of my cases, my firm has been able to establish the employees, who were supposed to be working, instead were conducting personal errands, visiting friends, even working elsewhere. I recently had two cases where my client learned, only after terminating the teleworking relationship, that the employee had been working for other employers at the same time -- a deception enabled by the teleworking policy.

NO NEW DUTIES
Many functions cannot be performed from outside the office. When the work being performed at home reduces, it is often difficult to find other work for the teleworker. Once accustomed to the lifestyle of working from the comfort of their own home, these employees invariably resist returning to the office.

DISTRACTION
Before approving a request to work from home or in dealing with an existing arrangement, there are a few things employers should consider:
- Only approve this for employees who work on commission, are paid by piecework or are otherwise remunerated solely based on discernible performance.
- In existing teleworking arrangements, are you obtaining value or has the employee been largely forgotten while receiving the same paycheque?
- Have a contract permitting the employee's reversion to working from the office, at any time in the future, if the employer prefers it.
- In the absence of such a contract, provide working notice of the return to the office. Otherwise, the court might deem the change to be a constructive dismissal.
-- Howard Levitt, counsel to Lang Michener LLP, practises employment law in eight provinces.

MY THOUGHTS
telecommuting is not something that can be implemented without much thought.  there are jobs that can be done from home but there are certain positions that need to be at the office.  work from home schemes can work with well-thought of procedure and with people who's mature enough to be left on their own.

work at home entrepreneurs should beware of scammers

Scammers target desperate job seekers
Schemes that ask for money to set up clients in jobs that never materialize are proliferating, watchdogs say.
October 23, 2010|By Stuart Pfeifer, Los Angeles Times
One in a series of occasional reports about the U.S. unemployment crisis.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/23/business/la-fi-job-scams-20101024

Many of these schemes have been around for years, promising people who send money a chance to work as bartenders, home inspectors or "secret shoppers" for retail chains. But with nearly 15 million Americans out of work, consumer groups and law enforcement agencies say these scams are multiplying as con artists capitalize on the misery of the unemployed.

"It's an epidemic. It's opportunity time for fraud artists, and people are so desperate to earn a living that they easily fall for the scam," said Ellyn Lindsay, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles who has prosecuted several of these swindlers. Although federal authorities don't keep statistics on employment-related fraud incidents, the Better Business Bureau says such cases are on the rise.

The bureau received nearly 3,000 complaints about work-from-home scams in the first eight months of this year. That's more than double the 1,200 it received in the same period in 2007, just before the recession began, said Alison Southwick, spokeswoman for the Council of Better Business Bureaus.

Ida Jimenez, an unemployed mother of four from Fontana, said her attempt to work from home cost her $200 she couldn't afford to lose. It all started with an unsolicite e-mail: "If you have 60 minutes a day, here's a certified, proven and guaranteed way to make $225 and more every day, the easy way — from home!"
There was just one catch: She had to pay $197 for a guide before she could start processing manufacturer rebates from home. It seemed like such a good opportunity. After all, somebody has to do the paperwork on those things, she figured. Jimenez cut bac on grocery purchases until she'd saved enough money to get started. The guide never arrived. Jimenez spent weeks pursuing a refund, then gave up.

Crooks are counting on it. In contrast to investment fraudsters, who often seek big money from a small number of victims, job scammers aim to fleece large numbers of people for small amounts. Their hope is that victims won't squawk over modest sums, allowing the schemes to grow, undetected by authorities. The unemployed are particularly inviting targets because they have few resources to fight back.

A weak labor market is hurting the U.S. recovery, but it's been lucrative for scammers, who are bilking unemployed workers out of millions of dollars in fees to steer clients to jobs that never materialize, watchdogs say.

MY THOUGHTS

evil.simply evil. how can they even think of capitalizing on someone else's misery?

Warning for work at home entrepreneurs

Google was used in a bogus work scheme
Blaggers must surrender $3.5 million
By Spencer Dalziel
Tue Oct 19 2010, 11:57
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1790829/google-bogus-scheme
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/flame_author/1790829/google-bogus-scheme

DODGY SCAMMERS have been busted by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for unsubstantiated links to Google and hidden fees rackets.

The nefarious ne'er-do-well operators set up dodgy work-at-home schemes, splattering Google's logo and name all over their literature. The racketeers then embedded automatic hidden charges into their work-at-home kits and took the $72.21 from their victims' bank accounts every month. The scam was set up so that the cash would continue to come out until the punters cancelled the automatic charges at the bank. Failure to cancel the charges was taken as a nod by the fraudsters to continue collecting their illicit fees.

Promising $100,000 in six months, the blaggers called their work-at-home kits "Google Money Tree", "Google Treasure Chest" and "Google Pro". The defrauded customers weren't told by the defendants that they would incur any hidden charges for signing up with the services. Punters were lured into signing up by the bad economic climate.
According to the FTC, the defendants will have to surrender $3.5 million in assets for falsely claiming they were linked with Google. The assets include a big Harley motorcycle and a gun collection. They were also done for dodging the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, which is in place to stop third parties from dipping into bank accounts without written permission.
The INQURIER reported in December last year that Google was dragged into another work from home scam. In that case Google sued a company called Pacific Webworks for having allegedly been involved in exactly the same type of scheme.

MY THOUGHTS
the internet world is full of crooks. careful.careful

crowdsourcing for work at home entrepreneur

Crowdsourcing work: Labour on demand or digital sweatshop?By Fiona Graham
 Business reporter, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11600902

There are not many chief executives who can boast a workforce of half a million people around the globe.  But then Lukas Biewald's workforce is not your traditional one. As boss of San Francisco-based CrowdFlower, he says that his company offers "labour on demand".  His employees are crowdsourced - people who work from home, when needed, on specific projects.

"It doesn't make sense to build a box around people, put in internet and plumbing and everything else, make them drive to work and have managers for them," Mr Biewald says.  "I think that companies like ours are really set to disrupt the whole outsourcing industry."

The rapid spread of broadband internet has allowed an explosion in companies offering a virtual workforce.  They provide people ready to complete jobs ranging from small data-driven tasks, to design, translation and content production - in fact anything really that can be done on a laptop with an internet connection at home.

Human intelligence

For companies using these services, the main benefits are cost and speed. Workers are not employees, and are paid either an hourly or piece rate. In some cases work is done on spec, with only the "winner" pocketing the reward. And rates tend to be lower than would be paid to conventional freelancers.

So not surprisingly, the trend has attracted controversy, with some commentators comparing it to off-shore digital sweatshops. The granddaddy of them all is Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Its original purpose was to find duplicate web pages for Amazon products - a simple task, but one that computers were unable to do. The company quickly saw that there was a wider application and the service went public in 2005. It lists thousands of "human intelligence tasks", or HITs, from comparing different web pages, to transcription and tagging photos. The jobs pay anything from a few cents up to a few dollars for more complicated work.

And it did not take long for the idea to be adopted elsewhere. You can crowdsource web development from oDesk, find a writer to create your content from Elance, and source your logo for a few hundred dollars from Crowdspring or 99designs.
To fund your project there is Kickstarter, and if your customers get cranky you can send them to Get Satisfaction. When you are ready to move on to higher level research and development, you can put it out to the crowd at InnoCentive.

Virtual money

CrowdFlower compares its labour-on-demand model with cloud computing - when you divide a task between a group of computers it is accomplished more quickly, around the clock, thanks to greater processing power. The company's workforce is available immediately, according to Mr Biewald.

"For example, you might have a directory of a million businesses and the job is to check that all the addresses are correct," he says.
"We have people instantly around the world waiting for work to come through."
“When we started we weren't really sure if companies would buy it.”
Lukas Biewald
CEO, CrowdFlower

What makes CrowdFlower slightly different is that they do not source their workers directly from the internet. Jobs are taken in, and then the company uses a diverse range of channels to fill the task. They work with initiatives allowing, for example, single mothers to work from home. Traditionally games companies have offered players in applications such as Farmville the chance to take part in surveys, or watch adverts to earn in-game currency. Now they have the chance to complete CrowdFlower tasks, through a system called Virtual Pay.

"I love it because we almost trick the game players into doing something useful for the world while playing these games.
"Just do ten minutes of real work that a real company can use, and we'll give you a virtual tractor. That way everyone wins."

'High quality'

A large part of CrowdFlower's effort goes into quality control. Mr Biewald estimates that about 99% of their research and development is focused on how to keep quality high. They do this through a complex statistical analysis system where they track the accuracy of workers. As people progress up the food chain, they receive bonuses. "The end result is that customers actually get higher quality data than they would have got through normal outsourcing," Mr Biewald says.
Clients past and present include Microsoft, PayPal, eBay and the US Department of State.

"When we started we weren't really sure if companies would buy it, but what we've seen is a lot of big companies are interested in this new model,. In fact they're not just interested but they desperately want labour on demand."

Design for life

Operating from Australia and the US, 99designs launched in 2008 and crowdsources logos from a community of about 100,000 amateur and professional designers. It uses a competition-style business model. The company that is looking for a logo offers a prize (the minimum is $200) and writes a brief. Designers then submit logo designs, the customer reviews them and may ask for revisions, before then picking a winner. Copyright then passes to the customer and the winning designer is paid the prize money. The company charges a $39 listing fee, plus 15% of the prize fund.

The company grew from the forums of Sitepoint.com and according to founder Mark Harbottle, designers on the forums had started competing against each other in contests. This then grew as entrepreneurs started offering cash for logo designs for their own companies. "The designers loved it because it was what they were already doing, but they could get paid for it. We noticed it was happening and kind of latched onto the idea, and built software solution to help these designers doing what they were doing anyway."

The company estimates that a new design is uploaded to the site every five seconds. It pays out close to $700,000 a month to designers, and expects this to top $1m by the end of the year. But can a crowdsourced design really compare to going to a traditional design agency? Mr Harbottle does not think there's a comparison. "Would you get a better result from an agency? Probably but I think that what we do is that we serve that bottom part of the market. "We're servicing the mom and pop shops, the small business, the freelancers and what these guys want is just an image to put on their business card or their website."

Brave new world?

As companies such as 99designs and their main competitor CrowdSpring flourish, the backlash has also grown. Websites including Nospec.com and Specwatch have accused companies of exploiting designers and devaluing the profession.
They say designers are producing work on a regular basis with no guarantee of payment, and claim that the payment on offer is far below market rate.  Specwatch, an anonymous collective, monitors design competitions, flagging up contests where, they claim, no award was made, and instances where the winning design was plagiarised.  Mr Harbottle says that the community does effectively self-police, but that the company is doing what it can to stamp out intellectual property theft. "If it was really bad we'd probably just ban them instantly. The thing that's important is to keep on top of the community to stamp out that behaviour, it's not acceptable, it's actually illegal."

The controversy goes beyond the design community. When professional networking site LinkedIn started suggesting that people listed as translators might like to help with a crowdsourced project to translate sections of the site "because it's fun", the fallout from incensed professionals resulted in the setting up of a LinkedIn group protesting the move.
Education and experience is vital to ensure strategic design work, which also requires collaboration between client and agency, says Debbie Millman, president of the US association for professional designers, the AIGA, which has around 20,000 members.

“You wouldn't go into a restaurant and ask for five different meals and only pay for the one you like. Why should it be ok to work with designers that way?”
Debbie Millman
President, AIGA

 "Once you take that partnership away then what you're really asking for is work that is unstrategic, that is created in a silo of not having any real education about what the client is looking for, and not being able to collaborate on ideas or inspiration", says Ms Millman, who is also president of design company Sterling. "I feel that when you crowdsource work, it's really not about collaboration of large groups, it's really about power, because you're taking away all the power of the designer to be compensated for their work, for their skill, and I don't see in anyway how that's collaborative. I think it's abusive."

Pro-spec commentators argue that the work benefits designers, by helping them build portfolios but Ms Millman is scathing about this. "If somebody is looking to build their portfolio, perhaps they could offer their services pro-bono to an organisation that's really going to be able to help them. It's an imbalance of power.  "You wouldn't go into a restaurant and ask for five different meals and only pay for the one you like. Why should it be okay to work with designers that way?".

Offshoring the crowd

Given that crowdsourcing sites draw large amounts of workers from the developing world, critics see this as a new model for off-shoring jobs from developed countries. "I think the criticisms are not crazy. It's something that we think about a lot," says CrowdFlower's Lukas Biewald.  "But I'd say most of what we see is not taking away jobs from people. It's actually getting extra work done that our customers wouldn't have been able to do otherwise."  The company has a partnership with a company called Samasource, providing work for people in Kenyan refugee camps, where the $2-an-hour rate of pay is far above what the workers could otherwise earn.

Mr Biewald believes the developing world has a right to benefit from new working opportunities. "I don't see why someone in China should only be allowed to do the worst, most dangerous jobs we have to offer. "The great thing about digital work is it's really hard to make a sweatshop out of digital work. It's really hard to force someone to do work, you can't beat someone up through a computer screen."

MY THOUGHTS

need to research more on this one.  sounds very interesting

Make a Home Office Feel Like a Real Office with Peerdrum

Make a Home Office Feel Like a Real Office with Peerdrum
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto  on 10.22.10
Science & Technology (electronics)
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/10/make-a-home-office-feel-like-real-office.php

There is a lot to love about having people work from home. Notwithstanding some recent naysaying, it saves a lot of energy and time, and other studies show that it increases productivity. But about half of the managers in America hate the idea, because their idea of managing is watching their drones and checking their comings and goings. Their prayers are answered, thanks to Peerdrum, a new program that lets your boss metaphorically look over your shoulders while you work at home. Now you can have that same lack of privacy and empowerment at home that you remember from the good old days.

This ingenious great leap forward takes a snapshot of your screen every ten minutes and sends it to your boss, who then knows exactly what you are doing and watching. Want some privacy to do your own thing? Don't worry, you can "check out" and not send the shots to the boss. This has the added benefit that you can do what you want without worrying about taking advantage of your benevolent employer, because you won't get paid for the time you check out.

The developers put it this way in an email:
We contract remote workers exclusively and needed a better way to remotely manage their time and performance. It lets you monitor remote workers via automated screenshots and time tracking. You can see what your team is doing throughout the day so you don't need to be literally standing over their shoulders. No one likes feeling spied on, so we try to keep the power in the team's hands by allowing them to pause the monitoring whenever they want a break, which also pauses their time tracking so billing is more accurate and honest.

That is the thing I so miss from the office- that happy interaction with the boss as he stood over my shoulders and clocked my comings and goings. I just can't wait until they implement this at TreeHugger, it will be just like the old days back at the cube farm!

MY THOUGHTS
i hope this country will catch up soon enough. there are so many tasks that can be done from home.  think of how much money can be saved on office space and electricity.  and on personal transpo expense.  i know it will work. purely performance-based.  this time tracking is a very good solution.

FBI warning on work-from-home schemes

FBI warning targets work-from-home schemes
http://www.live5news.com/Global/story.asp?S=13372054

SOUTH CAROLINA (WMBF)- The Federal Bureau of Investigation has issued a consumer warning Wednesday, as thousands of consumers continue to lose money from work-from-home scams.  Officials claim scam victims are often recruited by organized cybercriminals through a variety of outlets, ranging from newspaper ads to online employment services and unsolicited emails.  Once a person is recruited for the job, officials say often times the consumer becomes a "mule" for cyber criminals to steal and launder money.
Now, federal officials are warning consumers to be on the lookout for these types of scams and to take precautions to avoid becoming a victim. Those looking for work are asked to be wary of work-from-home opportunities and to research a company before signing on for work.

Other tips from the FBI to avoid work-from-home scams include:
•Be cautious about any opportunities offering the chance to work from home with very little work or prior experience. Remember: if it looks too good to be true, it usually is.

•Never pay for the privilege of working for an employer. Be suspicious of opportunities that require you to pay for things up front, such as supplies and other materials.

•Never give your bank account details to anyone unless you know and trust them.  A February 2010 crackdown coordinated by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has continued to target these types of schemes, many of which have been fueled by a slowing economy.

Those who believe they have become a victim of a work-from-home scam should contact their financial institution immediately. Any fraudulent activity or suspicious work-from-home offers should be reported to the Internet Crime Center.

MY THOUGHTS
better safe than sorry.  remember - never pay.  there are home-based jobs for sure.  but we shouldn't be required to pay of it's legit.