Ghost job or scam job? They look different in the data

The two failure modes get lumped together as "fake jobs", which is unhelpful because the defence against each is different. A scam wants something from you now, so it shows up in the apply path: the link leaves the employer domain, contact runs through a free email account, and money or identity documents come up early. A ghost job wants nothing from you at all, which is exactly why it is harder to spot.

Because the evidence differs, collapsing them into a single score loses information. A listing can be near-zero scam risk and still be a poor use of your afternoon. A listing can be from a company genuinely hiring and still route you through an apply flow worth refusing. Scoring them separately lets you act on the right one.

In practice the scam signals are the ones to treat as disqualifying. Ghost signals are better read as a priority ordering: not a reason to never apply, but a reason to spend your best effort somewhere else first, or to reach a human on the team instead of the form.