Is your CV an identity toolkit?
Job and CV listing sites have developed into popular popular resources for job seekers but now there are indications that these sites are a lucrative source of information for ID fraudsters.
Reports are emerging that a Russia-based outfit going by the name of Phreak has created an online tool designed to capture personal details from sites such as Monster, CareerBuilder and Jobvertise. Unlike previous screen scraping attacks, this one is said to be much more sophisticated. It extracts key data which can be built into databases and combined with information from other sources to give detailed profiles of individuals, ages, work history and so on.
The biggest concern is that this information will be sold to fraudsters using it to create very convincing identity theft scams, but there are privacy concerns in general about such techniques. For example, employers could be using it to see if any of their own staff are looking for positions elsewhere.
The careers sites, and all the other sites where people divulge personal background info, such as Friends Reunited, MySpace and so on, can only do so much to protect their users from this sort of profiling. Before you put anything online you should always stop and ask yourself if you really want this information to become part of a dossier of your life.
18th July 2008