As we go further into the economic death, we are faced with the most undesirable aspect of the human culture.  That is to say, scammers are going to use the chance to find people to scam.  I don’t say this lightly because scammers have become more cunning and dubious through the years.  They are actually using the internet as well as most companies.  They are going to sites like Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com, and other hiring sites to get people to apply for jobs.

<<See Previous Post — Nationwide Marketing Scam

Having said that, I recently had a problem with being tried to be scammed.  I applied to a job posted on Careerbuilder and that is how they got a hold of my home address.  I did not think about the security problems associated with applying for jobs on line, until recently.

As you can see that is how they got a hold of my information and have made myself vulnerable to scams and also, other potential problems.  I am talking about Theft ID and also spam.  Although spam is to be expected with anything we do online.  I’ve come to the conclusion that we will always have to deal with spam.   I wanted to talk about how to be careful when you apply for online jobs and  put your information out on the internet.  I’ve started taking some steps to prevent this from happening again.

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• No Longer am I going to apply for any more private companies — if I can’t see who they are then they have something to hide.
  
• To prevent spam — I am going to make an email address just for my resume.  That way I don’t have to worry about spam on my main account.
• If it’s too good to be true, it is probably not —  I am going to start using that philosophy when I’m about to apply for a job.  See picture above, advertising way to much money for a Customer Service rep.
• Don’t ever put your Social on your Resume —  That is the most crucial part, if you want your identity stolen that is one sure way to get it stolen.  Even though that should be painfully obvious it is sometimes overlooked.
  

I am sure there are more but that is the basic idea of the whole thing.  I will probably come up with even more ideas later on but this was one thing that I have been thinking about all day.    I also think we have to starting asking the questions before the seriousness of the scammers come to bear.   They will never go away but until we get serious, they will always be there to taunt us and laugh us.   I am not sure how to do it,  Do you?   Are we  just supposed to sit here and take it or do we fight back and how?   These are importantquestions  for anyone to consider when you are faced with the possiblity of fraud or being scammed?  How do we deal with it in the future? Should scammers be punished serverely or moderately?