There are so many websites on the internet that provide work-from-home job opportunities. Some are legit, and some are frauds. People search for online job opportunities on the internet and sign up on several websites without doing any research that claims to provide legit work and money.
Duplicate websites are also a threat on the internet, as scammers create fake or duplicate websites that look the same as the actual ones, which are legit and are trusted by many individuals.
One of the most trusted platforms launched by the government of India on July 1, 2015, as a part of the Digital India program was the Digitize India Platform (DIP). The project aimed to provide digital services for any company or organization by converting physical or scanned documents into digital format.
Many people registered on that platform to find online jobs like data entry and typing jobs. According to a report from the Ministry of Electronics and IT, the number of registered users on November 30, 2018, was 5.10 lakhs, and 1.06 crore documents and 3.91 crore snippets were digitalized.
Later, this platform was closed in 2019 as per the recommendations of the Project Review Steering Group (PRSG) (as per the annual report from the Ministry of Electronics and IT in 2020–2021).
But a fake Digitize India Platform is providing online jobs, which are probably fake. People may think that this website is a real government website that is part of the Digital India program, but the official domain or website of digitizeindia.gov.in is not active and was closed on March 31, 2019.
Difference Between the Legit and the Fake Digitize India Platform
The difference between the real and fake website is that the real website, digitizeindia.gov.in, had a dot (.) before digitize India, whereas the fake one does not have that dot, and every government website ends with .gov.in.
Real website: digitizeindia.gov.in (not active)
Fake website: digitizeindiagov.in
If we check the about section of that fake website, it says that the platform was created in 2020 and aims to provide work-from-home job opportunities like data entry, content writing, translation, survey work, and more.
They have added several official logos of government programs and projects to the site to make it look credible.
They claim that you will get up to Rs. 3000 registration bonus, and they also added some fake payment proofs that are probably fake.
Also check: Surely remote review: Is it the best website to find remote jobs?
How to Identify Fake Websites?
Here are some ways to check if the website is real or fake:
1. Check the website URL: Firstly, check the URL of any suspicious website. In the case of digitizeindiagov.in, it looks real, but in reality, it is a duplicate website using the official name of digitizeindia.gov.in.
2. Verify contact details: Trusted platforms clearly mention their contact details for customer support purposes. In the case of the fake Digitize India platform, they have not clearly mentioned their contact details, only a contact form is available, but they don’t answer queries if you contact them.
I have contacted them regarding the official Digitize India platform and asked why they are using the official name of a government website that was already closed in 2019, but they have not answered the query till now.
3. Look for grammatical mistakes: You can identify if a website is legit or not by checking the grammatical mistakes, as official or real websites avoid making such mistakes. In the case of the fake website mentioned above, they include grammatical mistakes. If you check out their FAQ section, then there are so many grammatical mistakes that you can easily notice.
4. Check reviews: Check reviews from trusted platforms to identify any website’s legitimacy. In the case of the fake website mentioned above, there are no such reviews available on trusted platforms, only available reviews are of the official website, which was closed in 2019.
These are some methods by which you can check whether a website is legit or not. To learn more tricks on “how to identify a legitimate website,” you can check out the article published by Wiki How.
Please report these types of websites, as these fake websites use famous entities to promote their fake websites, and people who are looking for jobs may fall into their trap and share their personal details with them.