How it works
From a link to a verdict
EmployGuard asks the same questions a careful recruiter would — and only free, public sources to answer them.
- Step 1
Read
We open the link — through the hiring platform's own API when it has one — or read your screenshots with OCR, and pull out the title, company, website, pay, contacts and text.
- Step 2
Identify
We work out which company it claims to be and which website is really theirs, from the posting and from public records.
- Step 3
Check
Nine checks run at once: identity, scam language, contact channels, website age and history, job history, company records, pay and posting details.
- Step 4
Score
Each finding moves the score from a neutral 60, up or down. Decisive red flags cap it. You see every piece of evidence.
The nine checks
Who's really hiring
Do the contact addresses and links belong to the company the posting names — or to a look-alike, a free webmail account, someone else's board?
Scam language
Fees, cheques, gift cards, crypto, reshipping, bank details up front, pressure to act now — the phrases job scams keep using.
How they want to talk
Real employers interview by video call or in person. Chat apps, anonymous forms and hidden links are a warning.
Website age
How long the company's website — and any other site the posting sends you to — has existed. Scam sites are usually weeks old.
Website history
When the Internet Archive first saved the company's website. A real business leaves years of history behind.
Job history
Whether the company's careers page — and this job — show up in the Internet Archive over the past 12 months.
Company records
The company in public registries: Wikidata, the global LEI register, SEC filings and UK Companies House — founding year, address, status.
Pay check
Is the pay believable for this kind of job? Fake offers pay far above the market for very little.
Posting details
Does the posting say who, what, where and when — or is it vague, stale or already closed?
The score
Every posting starts at 60 out of 100: unproven, not suspect. Each check adds or takes away points for what it found — an old website with years of history adds a few; a contact address on a domain registered last month takes away a lot.
Some findings settle the matter on their own: a fee asked of you, a cheque to pass on, a look-alike of the company's website, an interview on Telegram. They cap the score, because a scammer borrowing a real company's name also borrows its good records.
Separately, we say how sure we are — high when most checks found something to go on, lower when the posting gave little away or the screenshots were hard to read.
In short
- 80–100Looks legit
- 60–79Probably fine
- 40–59Suspicious
- 0–39Likely a scam
Where the facts come from
No paid data. Answers are cached for a few days, so checking the same company twice doesn't ask twice.
| Source | What it tells us | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) | When the company's website was first saved, and whether its careers page — and this job — appear in the past 12 months. | Free, no key |
| WHOIS and RDAP | When the company's domain was registered, asked of the domain registries themselves. | Free, no key |
| Wikidata | The company's founding year, headquarters, size, industry and official website. | Free, no key |
| GLEIF (the global LEI register) | The company's legal name, legal address and whether it is active. | Free, no key |
| SEC EDGAR | Financial reports a US-listed company has filed. | Free, no key |
| UK Companies House | Status, incorporation date and registered address of British companies. | Free key |
| Adzuna | What similar job ads pay in the same country. | Free key |
| Tesseract OCR | Reading the text in your screenshots — on our own server, nothing sent anywhere. | Open source |
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