are there ANY legitimate work at home - data entry - jobs? Everywhere I’ve looked I’ve run into scams
Scams abound. If they are advertising the work at home aspect, it is almost certainly a scam. I’d put the scams at about 99.9% of work at home ads.
The most likely scenario for legitimate work at home data entry would be to do data entry work on site for a company and then eventually convince them that the work could be done from home. Data entry is not the greatest fit for work at home because the data almost by definition are not on a computer. That’s why they need to be entered. So there would be a need to transport the paper records to and from someone’s house. Call center customer service type work is actually a better fit, and some legitimate companies hire for that.
Legitimate work from home opportunities will typically not advertise high/ above average wages and will emphasize the skills needed, not the work at home aspect. Companies hiring someone to work from home are more concerned about trustworthiness, have no need to pay more, and can be picky about skills/ track record.
There was a contractor my company used that had legit stay-at-home jobs. In fact, you HAD to work at home as he had no office for them.
Data entry of mail surveys…they could be long…running 8-12 pages. He had 2 people enter it then his software flagged differences that he then checked. He wrote his own software that he used.
They were paid by the keystroke.
Legit stay-at-home employment would be rare in that, as in the above example, it had to be something that could easily be sent/picked up by the worker (the surveys)…they weren’t paid by the hour so they couldn’t slack off on the employers dime (paid by the keystroke) and there was quality control (having 2 independent people do the task and compare).
Can’t think of too many tasks that would fit.
So, yes…stay at homework is 99.9% likely to be a scam.
U.C. Berkeley used to physically mail their card catalogues to rural Scotland for data entry as the hourly rate was cheaper than anything they could find in the U.S. (source: word of mouth from a librarian there in the early 90s). I would imagine today that similar things happen: any data that’s not too sensitive to leave the site, a copy can be mailed to Nigeria or Zimbabwe or somewhere where labor is cheap as easily as to you.