How to spot a fake job advert

1. Check first whether any money is being asked for. For placement inside Indonesia and abroad alike, placement costs may not be charged to a jobseeker — a request for money of any kind is reason enough to stop here.
2. Check who is making the offer: the company you would work for, or a third party placing you. A third party must be licensed as a placement operator; for placement abroad that licence is a SIP3MI, and the company appears on the list of licensed placement companies the manpower ministry publishes.
3. Check the company whose name is being used — the entity and its business licence — the way two other pages in this guide describe.
4. Check which documents are demanded, and at what stage. An ID card, a family card, a bank account number or a selfie holding an ID card, asked for before there is any employment contract, is personal data handed over on no basis at all.
5. Check where payment and communication are directed: a personal bank account, a link to install an app from outside the official stores, or a message group as the only channel.
6. Save screenshots of the advert, the conversation and every document you received before you do anything else. The advert and the account usually disappear first.

• The fee is called a “deposit”, “administration”, “compulsory training” or “uniform”: what it is called changes nothing, because what is prohibited is charging a jobseeker for placement.
• You are accepted without an interview, or interviewed only over a messaging app: the step being skipped is not a formality, it is the one chance each side has to check the other.
• A salary far above the market for work needing no experience: this is what stops the rest of the offer being read, and that is what it is there for.
• Placement abroad on a tourist visa first, with the work permit “arranged once you are there”: that is placement outside the proper procedure, and inside it no placement agreement protects you.
• The company whose name is used turns out to be real and licensed: that is the commonest pattern of all — a legitimate name borrowed for an offer that is not theirs. Confirmation can only come from the company itself.
• The advert runs on a large job board: a platform carries adverts, it does not vouch for them. Published is not checked.

• This page declares no advert and no party fraudulent. Fraud is a legal conclusion, and a court is what reaches it.
• Not every odd offer is fraud, and not all fraud looks odd. What is read here is a signal, not proof.
• There is no official register of “fake vacancies”. What exists is a register of licensed placement operators, and unlicensed is not the same as recorded as a fraudster.
• We hold no vacancy data: no page on this site can say that a job advert is genuine or fake.

Send no money and hand over no further documents; stop a payment still in progress while you can. Report the advert to the platform carrying it, the placement practice to the kabupaten or kota labour office, and placement abroad outside the proper procedure to the manpower ministry. Once money has moved or personal documents have been handed over, report it to the police — with the evidence you kept first.

If the recruiter’s phone number is all you have, the page for that number shows the company that published it where there is one, together with any official listing citing that number — as that authority’s finding, never as a judgement of ours. We hold no vacancy data, so the offer itself cannot be answered here.

• Minister of Manpower Regulation 39/2016 on Labour Placement
• Law 18/2017 on the Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers
• Law 27/2022 on Personal Data Protection
• Law 11/2008 on Electronic Information and Transactions, as last amended by Law 1/2024
• Law 1/2023, the Criminal Code, in force since 2 January 2026

A summary of the rules in force, not legal advice. Rules and thresholds change — check with the relevant authority before you register.

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