Dear ConnieTalk: Phishers After Job Seekers
 Tuesday, June 16th, 2009  by Connie T.

Here's an e-mail we received that we thought you all should see.

Dear ConnieTalk, I know there are a lot of job seekers out there right now, and I wanted to warn your readers of the scammers out there looking to take advantage of the multitudes of resume posters in these rough economic times.

Not a minute after I put an ad up with my professional experience and resume attributes on Craigslist, I got an e-mail from a daisy.suggs+bz@gmail.com (though it appeared only as daisy.suggs@googlemail.com). The e-mail asked, simply, "Hi there, Are you still searching?"

"Yes," I wrote back. "Thanks."

Another minute later, a reply pops in that says, and I quote, "I really don't mean to push my beliefs on you but in this economy more people should be looking into working for them selves [SIC]. Check out http://tinyurl.com/ml3emx , I don't think I'll ever interview for someone's job again for the rest of my life. Good luck!"

The quickness of the reply and the personable aspect of it put some smoke and mirrors between me and my inclination to identify spam. I clicked on the URL, but thankfully, my browser Mozilla advised me immediately that the website I was sneakily redirected to (googlebizkit.com.free.adjmp.info) has been reported as a web forgery for phishing, malware, or similar attempts, and was automatically blocked by my security preferences.

ConnieTalk, I can't believe that there are people out there trying to make a bad situation worse by trying to trick people into work-at-home job schemes, identity forgery, and whatever else these crooks are after. Please tell your readers to use common sense AND research before committing to revealing any personal information for applications of any kind. Thanks, Randi.

No, Randi, thank you!

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