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Is it Work from Home or a Scam?
By Bob Branco
How many of you receive emails from various companies asking you to consider their job offers in order to make loads of money? Though many of these offers are tempting just because most blind people are out of work, the fact is that a vast majority of these offers are the result of scams. The question I am asking is: How do we, as consumers, determine what is or isn’t a scam? We would like to take advantage of many of these offers at some point, but we don’t know how true they really are. Is there a technique by which we can find out the validity of these emails?
If it is determined that these emails are bogus, it is very disappointing and sad. Though these scammers don’t necessarily target the blind, it’s a shame that the blind, along with everyone else, are being used as pawns in order for scammers to get information out of us. We, as blind consumers, have a tough enough time trying to make a living based on our financial limitations without scammers trying to stick their noses in our business.
If the emails are for real, then the question is different. Though many of us could use the income as a result from working at home, is the income sustainable enough where we can get rid of our supplementary disability checks? What if we think that the income is sustainable, but then we find out that it varies from month to month. Now we face a double edged sword. We don’t want to eliminate our supplementary checks if they are the source of our livelihood, yet we don’t want to spend weeks at a time not making enough money to live, either. I know blind people who receive financial assistance from the Government, yet they join these home businesses in order to make extra money. Though I admire their determination, I hope they gave my earlier question some thought. If I work at home, I must be careful about how I manage the Government assistance against my new income, and I absolutely have to know which is going to help me the most. It’s not about preferring Government help. It’s about making an honest living. If we didn’t have an eighty percent unemployment rate among the blind in this country, I would probably not be having this discussion right now. Of course most of us would rather not receive help from the Government. I’d like to think that we’re proud enough to go to work and support ourselves and our families based on what we make from our jobs.
