Category: information

Prevailing winds of Job Scams being on the Rise in 2024

Paul1 Reply

Scam

Identifying Potential Job Scams

I recently got an email from a what looks to be from a Froelich-Engeerscarrer.com.  I wanted to share with you how to identify that it is most likely just scam and not even replying to these types of emails.

Email that I received:

Hello Applicant,

I hope this email finds you in great health.Froelich Engineers, Inc,welcomes your application for the Remote IT Support Specialist  position on LinkedIn. Your impressive qualifications and experience have attracted our curiosity, and we would like to invite you to an interview.

We believe you have the potential to be an essential member of our team, and we hope to learn more about you. As we discover more about you via the interview, you will have a better understanding of our organization.

If you choose to advance with the interview process, please respond to this email with a simple “YES”. We’ll contact you about the next stages.

We appreciate your interest in joining our team and look forward to hearing from you.

NB:If you receive this message before please  ignore.However if didnt kindly respond

Best regards.

Thomas Trosten (thomastrosten@froelich-engineerscareer.com)

As you can see there are several red flags in the message because of not quite English.   Here’s what I noticed of the bat with this email.   ONLY asking you to reply with a YES instead of sending a calender invite to video chat.    Also the spelling in the DIDNT and no spacing in the first paragraph between the period indicates this is a mail merge or some kind of email.

Investigating the company and Domain

When I get these types of emails and am curious to see if they may be real or not, the first place I go is looking up the domain they are supposedly sending from.  Froelich-engineerscareer.com:

After checking with the domain tools website this was just created a few days ago.  So that’s another good red flag but the real red flag is that on the main website.  They say this on their careers page:

Scam or No Scam!

Being that they are using bad English and that I they aren’t using the right email address and even that domain they are sending from is just days old, I would have to assume this is a scam and that it isn’t real and that you shouldn’t trust anything they say if they contact you about a possible job.   It’s more and more looking just like a big phishing or money scam that they are trying to do and you should avoid these types of email scams that might come your way.

Always check the company you are getting solicited from before you even consider taking the job.  They are doing their own research on you and you should be able to do the same research back to see if they are real or just fake jobs trying to fool the many out their who might need a job.   Don’t ever stop researching companies as you are applying for them.

 

Job Hunting 102: Secrets to a Successful Job Application

Paul
Job hunting by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Pix4free

Crafting a Persuasive Cover Letter

Do I need to add a Cover Letter?  A persuasive cover letter can be quite challenging to some but if you really want to get that job this would be the something that you will need to do.  It however isn’t as difficult as it might seem.  The importance of the cover letter is tell the employer in your own words why you are applying for the job and what you might bring to the team.  It doesn’t have be multiple pages but a good cover letter uses one page to tell the employer more about you than what the resume can or will.   It is also good to have to make sure to highlight those skills that the employer is looking for.

Structuring the cover effectively can make a world of differences from being in the NO pile to being put in the YES pile.  The cover letter needs to be easy to ready and something that demonstrates why are a good fit for the company.   It could even show them that you are a good fit for team that you might have to work with.   Each Cover letter should be personalized and that can be difficult because that will take time but if you do it right then you will most certainly be put in the YES pile.  You’ll want to stand out and make them see you may bring a value to the company in one way or another.

Identifying Reputable Job Search Websites

Which sites are good for me to look for a job?  Not all Job search websites are the same, some are better than others and that can be negative to your finding a job.   You should strategically standout in online job portals.  You should have a resume that will draw people to ask for you to apply for a job or a even jobs.   The resume then can at least be showing people that you’re got some good talents.   What sites are good for looking for a job?  Here are a few websites that might work well with standing out, however these are just a few and you should look to figure out which ones you want to use:

These are just few that you can start looking for a job but you should optimize your profiles to show them what you are good at and to bring in those jobs that you are looking to apply to.  You’re online profiles are the first impression on what the employers will see when they are looking for potential job applicants that might be a good fit for the job they are looking to fill.   You should also setup email alerts for new jobs that show up and be ready to apply for them when they come into your mail box.   I am sure if you have filtered the right job searches for a particular field or industry you will be more likely to find those jobs that you want to work at.

Build and Expand Your Professional Network

You will most likely start getting job recruiters looking to fill a job that they have.   So you should keep the lists of people who have contacted you in the past and occasionally email them seeing if they have anything that you might be able to apply for.   Just be mindful that these recruiters make money by filling positions that companies are looking for so this isn’t always going to be the best approach but I’ve had some good luck with this in the past.  You should leverage all the social media sites you can from LinkedIn, Twitter(X), Facebook and maybe even put it out that you are looking for a job on Mastodon. As long as you know that it will be slow work trying to find recruiters that are specialized for what industry you are looking to work in, it can be a great way to at least find jobs that you might not find any other way.  Another good way to build and expan your professional network is to attend conferences or job fairs to possibly give the recruiter your resume.   These are the best way to make sure the employer gets the resume but isnt’ always going to bring you an interview it however is worth trying to help you job hunt.

If you liked reading this article why not check out the other article I’ve done already, Job Hunt 101: Mastering the Art of Applying for Positions.  I am not done with this topic and more are on the way, don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter for even more articles like this.   Don’t forget to share this article to help support this blog.

How Internet of Things are changing our lives

Paul


IoT

IOT Security

When we say the Internet Of Things(IOT) it really brings about a bad thought into our minds, or at least in mine.   I never really understood why someone would come up with this term because it bring a bad connotation and that can bring about a lot of hesitancy to buy the devices.   It can be quite hard to understand or even harder to conceptualize the use the devices in question.   IOT is in its simplest form is just that a device that needs to be connected to the internet and be able to connect to a server in some other location such as an camera that is outside to watch the property, or even a wireless connection that is used to monitor the door being locked or unlocked.  This however can be bad because like any other way we have seen bad people figure out ways around this technology and use it for their own devices or against the owners.   The privacy and security of the devices have been almost overlooked in the past due to the newness of the technology and how companies didn’t think about how to implement it in the right way.

IOT Benefits

Security and privacy aside right now, the benefits of using an IOT device is become easier to use.  Even now the technologies associated with the IOT devices are becoming more mature and more reliable.   According to IOT-Analytics There are 40+ emerging technologies from the IOT devices such as Hardware, IOT Marketplace, and even 6G technologies being developed.   The IOT device helps secure out homes and our properties and also help make our lives just a little bit better each day by allowing us to let them to the small jobs in our life or makes it so we feel a little bit more secure in our own little home.  The benefits allows us to automate cleaning the floor or even to communicate with machine to machine which helps speeds up processing of a certain task in the house or allows us to monitor what is going around in the house.  I am not sure the interconnectivity of devices is a huge benefit but it is a benefit to some and I can’t imagine our lives not getting better in the long run.  I think IOT devices and benefits have a long way to go before they will make a bigger difference in our lives.

How the digital divide can be solved

Paul


OLPC Rwanda Workshop Day 1

The Digital Divide

Let’s begin with the simple facts at hand, that the digital divide is just that a divide again the populations around the world that have very little change to have internet.   One such organization, One laptop per Child a non profit did try to do that to help bring the digital devices and educational needs to the areas with the greatest need.   It however went terribly wrong.   We can only identify areas that need the digital signals and try to provide for them.   This is where Elon Musk’s idea of StarLink is being conceived to do just that.  This will greatly help people with low income or places that has no access to wired internet to be able to get digital signals to them.   In all truthfulness, I really don’t have a lot of ideas on how to address this divide but I am sure it’s only a matter time before someone else comes up with the ideas that will make it work even better than I could imagine it.

Addressing it

Some way I guess we could address this issue is simply by making it inexpensive to countries that can’t afford to pay 100$ for the internet and or pay for the One Laptop Per Child.   I would think if we can get governments around the world to embrace stuff like this and help pay for the technology or even just the internet than more people around the world would be able to access the digital devices like everyone else.   I can think of maybe a few ways to help decrease the amount of the device or even just the internet to people who have little or no internet.   Make it free for everyone around the world but then who’d pay for it?  Who’d keep our privacy safe?  Who’d make sure they didn’t misuse our information?  That’s the real big question when it comes to how to make a free internet, because we will always have to worry about someone using our information for bad or even making money off of us in one way or another.  Still this is just one way we can at least attempt to fix the problems with the digital divide.   It isn’t going to solve every problem but at least it would make it so much easier for people to get onto the internet and we wouldn’t have as big of a divide like we do today.

Rogue Fake Codecs on the Rise

Paul

Panda Labs has been talking about Adware/VideoPlay and they are seeing a lot of variants on this.   They even play a game, find the difference in the installation screen:

Now as you can see this look to be the same agreement in all those difference installation.  Some things to consider Never install any software from a website that you don’t know Nothing about about.

Panda Labs also talks about these new variants in regards to what they do:

This file spreads by making copies of itself in the removable drives and it also creates an autorun.inf in order to be run when they are accessed. This file collects the data stored in the browsers, such as cookies, passwords, profiles, email accounts, etc, and connects to a remote address to send the information.
[Via Panda Labs Blog]

[ad#ad2-right]As you can see this makes you have very little security with your system.  I talk about Identity theft, and why you should always worry about your identity.   This however will make your passwords less secure and maybe even compromise you system to the point of having a data breach.   You need to be careful when you come by this, some fake codecs have been know to be scareware.  In which, the fake codecs installs a Trojan to tell you have a virus and try to make you buy a fake program to get rid of the Virus.  In one of my recent posts about Codecs and Facebook, I talked about the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack and how that will prevent you from installing these sociable links from friends and family.  The nice thing about this pack is it install all the really good codecs that you might come across on the web.  If you have this installed and there’s a website that says you need a special codec, you’d know that it is either a fake codec or the author who made the video doesn’t standardize.   In which case you will be more willing to leave that site without installing that codec.

If you follow these steps and also consider installing an Anti-virus and Firewall, you will be in a much better shape then when you first started out. Remember only you can prevent from getting a virus. You should also consider doing the registry edit that will prevent Autorun. As you can tell these new variants also are spread through USB and other removable media. This is the other way these programs are using to infect other systems.