Resume theft? Tell Us Your Story.
April 1st, 2008 by Brian
In light of recent security breaches leading to the theft of thousands of resumes, we are interested in hearing from anyone job seekers who have suffered as a result of one of these privacy breaches. Whether you found yourself added to some spam mailing lists, received fraudulent job offers or phone calls, or became a victim of identity theft, leave a comment or contact us, we would like to hear your story.
The reality is that the job board industry ($14B+) didn’t even exist 10 years ago and was not designed with the individual’s privacy in mind. Resumes are copyrighted material containing personal information that get bought and sold daily often without the owner’s consent. Many job seekers have noticed that their resume has been distributed without consent, modified by recruiters, or stored for long periods of time without adequate concern for the security or privacy of the individual.
In addition to the breach of copyright law, The Federal Bureau of Investigation in the US has pointed out regularly that posting your resume makes it much easier for criminals to find you. The FBI is currently investigating all sorts of cases involving online job scams. The agency actually issued a number of warnings and guidelines to people posting their resumes online. They point you to the internet crime complaint center if you think you have been defrauded online.
Many of the major job boards have procedures in place to prevent fraudsters’ “bots” downloading thousands of CV’s at a time. Monster and Careerbuilder will cap the number of page views and also monitor excessive usage but, in all reality, the damage is often done by the time the warning bell goes off. The simple truth is that anyone with a log in (purchased legally or hacked illegally) can access the information. Resume theft from job boards has been happening all the time and only now is getting any attention from the resume owners. This job board industry is new, has a low barrier to entry, is experiencing tremendous growth, and is generating enormous profits from the corporations who run them. The bottom line is that this industry was never designed to take an individual’s privacy and copyright protection into account.
This issue is the heart of our efforts at Glandore Systems and we want to hear from you. We are working not only to highlight the issue but to present technological solutions and promote strong privacy practices.
