Privacy watchdog warns job seekers to beware

April 21, SecurityFocus — Privacy watchdog warns job seekers to beware.

Online fraudsters are increasingly taking advantage of vulnerable job seekers

by using online résumés to steal their identity, a privacy expert warned this week.

The threats range from job fraud, where a criminal group poses as a legitimate

employer to launder money, to the sale of résumé details to database companies for

use in background checks. The seemingly small act of posting a résumé

publicly can have significant impact: over the past year, more than a dozen

Americans have been accused of a felony because their identity has been used for

online crime, said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum.

Ironically, the major résumé services offer tools to help job seekers keep their

identity private from the public, but workers fail to take advantage of the features

because they do not understand the dangers, Dixon said. However, a

majority of résumé services still don't take the issues seriously, she added.