Thursday, March 22, 2007

BBB Warns of Online Job Scams

Yesterday the Better Business Bureau serving Alaska, Oregon, and Western Washington issued a warning to job seekers to watch out for misleading online job postings designed to steal identity information or money.

The BBB has received dozens of complaints about a variety of job boards, including Monster, CareerBuilder, and Yahoo! HotJobs.

Tip-offs that the posting may be fraudulent include an unwillingness on the part of the employer to meet prospective applicants, the BBB reports.

In addition, the BBB advises "To further guard against identity theft, the BBB advises job hunters to refrain from including their Social Security Numbers, birth dates, or college graduation dates in resumes that are posted online. Consider posting your resume anonymously and providing an e-mail address as your primary contact rather than your home address or phone number."

They advise applicants to check out businesses on BBB's webpage to make sure they are legitimate.

If this becomes a big problem, it will have serious implications for gathering information from applicants and the ability to contact them. Another sad development in the evolving world of identity theft and online scams.

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