ADOL warns about social media phishing scheme

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WBRC) - The Alabama Labor Department has been a target for scammers recently, so much so, it had to shut down its website to get ahead of it.

Communications Director for ADOL, Tara Hutchison, said the website was unpublished for about five days.

She said it wasn’t something the department wanted to do, but because so many scammers were attacking the site trying to steal personal information, it had no choice.

Hutchison said scammers have been cloning the site using the same name, logo, cover photos, and even the same posts to make people believe they’re actually on the ADOL’s website.

So, it’s urging everyone to be vigilant.

“They will reach out to the claimants and ask them to message them, so that they can help them with their unemployment problems. And then once the claimant messages them, they ask for all their private information and therefore they can do whatever they want with that information, and the whole while the claimant thinks they are talking to us,” Hutchison said.

She added that if you are in fact speaking to someone from ADOL on social media, you’ll see a blue verified checkmark.

She says the department is working with Facebook to find solutions to prevent scammers from being able to clone the site.

For now, she recommends checking to see how many followers a page has before you use it because the scammer pages typically only have a handful of followers, which is a huge indication the site is a fraud.

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