Online Job Offers; Legitimate or Not? : Update

On July 30th, I did a post about fruadulent email job offers. This will be an on going list of the addresses that continue to come in. Since the addresses are all different I've been reporting them one at a time as Spam mail. Here they are, the senders, subjects and dates are:

Sender: hr@toospoiled.com
Subject: Susan, Regarding an employment offer as Site Manager and your online resume
Date Received: Tue, 17 Jul 2007

Sender: employment@goodgradesnow.com
Date Received: Tue, 17 Jul 2007

Sender: careers@nationalhumanresources.com
Subject: Susan, In Regards an Assistant Technical Manager employment offer and the Resume you posted online
Date Received: Wed, 22 Aug 2007

Sender: careers@adminsolutionsgroup.net
Subject: Susan, Possible Technical Director employment opportunity
Date Received: Fri, 24 Aug 2007

In addition to the above email, I also received an offer to register with a recruiting specialist site. Notice the subject line, it says "Subject: Re: your resume" which normally means you sent the other person an email first. I was able to tell by the email what the site name might be, so without clicking on any links in the email, I did a Google spam search, a Better Business Bureau search, and a Whois.net search, none indicated the site as a threat. The BBB search turned up nothing for the company at all, maybe a little odd since the company claims to have been in business since 1987.

Here are three things to consider:

1. As far as I understand it, none of the following services email your resume out to potential employers. Monster.com, CareerBuilders.com, and HotJobs.com, all offer visible resumes for prospective employers to view. However, each of these companies will keep your personal identifying information private unless you otherwise indicate that to them. Mine is private, therefore an employer must contact me via one of these services.

2. I never emailed my resume to anyone at the following address, so the "Re: your resume" in the subject line falsely identifies the email as a response to an email I appear to have sent out. However, the body of the email shows no signs of an "Original Message." There are those times when people just do not use good email etiquette and make this type of error.

3. After reviewing the site and checking for security measures to prevent identity theft while submitting any personal information or your resume, I found none. Even though they seem legitimate and link to legitimate job search engines it still appears suspicious.

I didn't include the sender's address here as I am currently checking it authenticity. I'll let you know as soon as I find out anything.

Until then and as always, if you need to check the origin of and email or website you can do that at WhoIs.net a domain-based research tool. Just enter the URL of a website into the "WHOIS Lookup" space and click the "Go" button. You can also use the "Search by domain or keyword" and "Search through deleted domains" to locate information about any given site.

You can also check out the resources at the Better Business Bureau's Security Alerts and BBB's Find a Reliability Report.

Online Job Offers; Legitimate or Not?

As some of you know, I've done work online as a syntax editor and most recently as a paid blogger. It came as no surprise then when I received an email inviting me to apply for a position as Site Moderator with a starting salary of $42,500 per year. For a moment I thought I had found my dream job or that at long last the job had found me! Sound too good to be true?

To check its validity I did a search on Google by typing in "toospoiled.com" scam. Here is what I found:

TooSpoiled, the next Impactww. New scams: eBandsearch , Scout / Scout2007

Instant Human Resources Scam

All Beware Of Instant Human Resources!!

Here is the email:

"Dear Susan ,

Your resume was recently viewed online and I feel that you are qualified to apply for a Site Moderator opening we have within the company. Too_Spoiled is one of the most exciting website launches of the last few years.

Site Moderators monitor the content of the site, flagging and/or removing any inappropriate postings. A Site Moderator would also look to stop any members from targeting minors on the site. Knowledge of HTML programming languages such as ColdFusion is preferred. This position is one that can be done from your home if you have a computer with online connection.

We have developed a compensation package that provides our Site Moderators a generous annual salary that begins at $42,500. Site Moderators with experience in this field can earn up to $52,000 per year. The opportunity for rapid advancement, tuition assistance and full medical and dental coverage is also included with this position.

If you’d like to further discuss this opportunity at Too_Spoiled, please click on the link below and fill out the online application. If the link doesn’t work, you can copy the address and paste it into your browser to go to the webpage.

http://entertainyourfuturegetspoiled.com/Careers.aspx?jp=7782861

You will be contacted in 1-2 days after we receive your online application by our Human Resources Department to schedule an interview.

Best Regards,

Brian Egelton
Too_Spoiled

Take_my_name out of future_employment_considerations."

If you receive an email from hr@toospoiled.com, it is not a legitimate offer for employment. I also received an email from employment@goodgradesnow.com in a similar letter format. It too is covered in the search results above.

It's important to look for these things when checking the validity of an online offer or email:

1. Check the header and footer of the email for its origin:

Received: from mail.datagroupmailhost.com (datagroupmailhost.com [66.132.203.75]) by rly-db06.mx.aol.com (v118.4) with ESMTP id MAILRELAYINDB063-acd46adf88ca7.

This one appears to have come from a DATA MINING source.

2. Check the link address for secured information transfer. Both of these emails wanted you to fill out an application with your full name, address, phone numbers and attach a resume. A secured site or portal for private information is marked like this: https:// the "s" indicates that it is a secured site. In the link from the email there is no "s" in the http:// address.

http://entertainyourfuturegetspoiled.com/Careers.aspx?jp=7782861

Never send your personal information online unless you are confident that it is protected by a secured site and remember to read its privacy policy.

3. Do a search using the company name and the word scam on Google (or the search engine of your choosing) to see what information has been reported about the company. You can also search the Better Business Bureau for any reports.

4. Does the email reference where they viewed your resume? If you have posted your resume online at any of these sites; Careerbuilders.com, Monster.com, hotjobs.yahoo.com or any other legitimate job search tool, and you receive an offer it will be identified as such.

5. Last but not least, if you are still unsure about the emails origin and content ... delete it and/or report it as spam!

There's nothing like a scam to shake things up a bit in a job search. Just thought I'd share my findings. Happy job hunting!

VIEW FOLLOW UP POST HERE