SARS said it will never advertise job vacancies on social media, only on the official SARS website's career section.

This is not the first time that SARS has been "used" for a fake job scam.

Fin24 reported in 2017, for instance, of a fake SARS-branded e-mail that was being circulated, supposedly "confirming acceptance" of the recipient into a bogus "SARS Learnership Programme".

The prospective applicant was then instructed to make a deposit of an "administrative fee" into an account for the "application to be processed".

That e-mail scam was an adaptation of another scam where individuals posing as "SARS staff" notified people that they had been successfully employed by SARS and were required to buy uniforms and identity cards, which were SARS-branded and appear authentic.

Last year Fin24 reported how Eskom was warning the public about a potential recruitment scam that had been doing the rounds on different social media platforms. The fake job posts were placed on social media.

Eskom, too, pointed out that its website is the only platform where employment opportunities would be listed.

Fin24 reported in December last year that South Africans are among the most affected by spam calls in the world, according to the 2018 Truecaller Insights report by mobile app company Truecaller.

According to the Truecaller report, almost half (49%) of all top spam calls in SA are scam-related.

It ranked South Africa as the fourth-most spammed country in the world. In SA, the number of spam calls per month increased from 15 in the 2017 study to 21 in 2018.

Fin24