LifeLock Blog

It’s usually a good thing when jobseekers’ interviewers says they’re excited about a prospective candidate’s resume, and want to move forward with background and credit checks. Most desperate jobseekers would happily give out any information the interviewer asked for at that point.

Fortunately Denise Crawford was a little paranoid when she got the request for her Social Security number. Instead of sending her information on, she contacted her state’s attorney general’s office and talked to them about the request.

“That shows a lot of red flags,” said Hugh Williams, the identity theft administrator in the Office of the Attorney General. “Most businesses that are going to run a credit report are going to do that on their own,” he said.

Crawford’s reaction to all this was predictable: she’s afraid now to apply for any other jobs over the Internet, but at the same time she knows that’s nearly the only way to find a job these days. Worse yet, the scammer has her resume and email address.

Other tips to jobseekers:

• Don’t give out personal information over the Internet unless you initiated the contact.
• Research any companies that you’re applying to. If they’re not on the Internet, steer clear.
• Be sure the hiring company is emailing from a their company’s URL. Example: humanresources@hiringcompanysname.com.
• Misspellings and poor grammar aren’t usually found in email messages sent by hiring managers.

It’s a brutal market for jobseekers, not just because of a dearth of jobs, but because there are so many scammer taking advantage of jobseekers.

If you have a bank account—and who doesn’t—your account is being targeted by identity theft malware, according to Sean-Paul Correll, a threat researcher at Panda Security.

“In 2007, we received more malware samples than in the previous 17 years combined,” Correll said in an interview with SCMagazineUS.com. “Our forecasts for 2008 indicated that we would end the year with some seven or eight million malware strains. However, we actually ended up with over 15 million malware specimens.”

Today’s hackers might have evolved from the nerdy boy geniuses who broke into computer systems for personal ego satisfaction, but they bear little resemblance to their ancestors. Instead, they more closely resemble the mega financial corporations they target.

“Today, there are huge illegal businesses behind this type of cybercrime, and criminal organizations are making a lot of profit from identity and data theft,” Correll said.

And just like other businesses can outsource their technology infrastructure, virus writers today can either rent the hardware, or contract with the hardware designers and owners to distribute their viruses for them.

Most of the major cybercriminal rings are in the former Eastern bloc countries, according to Correll. In fact, the criminals who hacked into then-presidential hopefuls Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s campaigns are thought to be from that region, as are the masterminds behind the Express Scripts data kidnapping.

The viruses are much like biological antigens that mutate and become antibiotic resistant; the software and technologies that used to work are becoming increasingly ineffective.

The only way an individual can protect themselves is to enlist the help of identity theft protection experts like those at LifeLock. Visit LifeLock.com to learn more about the technologies and strategies they employ to protect their nearly 1.5 million members. Enroll in their service using the LifeLock promo code Defense to receive a discount.