Cybercriminals Targeting Online Job Aspirants in India

According to security experts at Trend Micro, identity thieves in India are trying to take advantage of the bleak situation of employment by attacking various job portals in order to get the personal details of job seekers, reported Press Trust of India on August 16, 2009.

Trend Micro's statement seems valid to a larger extent in light of a recent job scam. A 22-year-old, working at a mid-sized IT firm in Delhi and desperately hunting for a good job in the IT sector, had fallen victim to online scammers.

The reports state that the victim, hoping to be in new job soon, posted his resume on some of the most reputed job sites such as Monster, Naukri and Jobsahead. As obvious, the person was overjoyed on receiving an e-mail from IT services company HCL Technologies, informing that his offer letter was being sent.

In the meantime, the victim was asked to deposit a refundable security of Rs 5,250 via check in a particular bank.

When the person informed his friend working for HCL Tech, he was completely shocked, as HCL had never asked anyone for such a deposit. So, the friend penetrated deeper into the matter and contacted the company's HR department. He also asked the victim to get more details of the job offer. When the victim tried to verify the details of the e-mail sender, he did not receive any reply.

The incident clearly suggests that these malicious activities could only be masterminded by smart online criminals looking for every single opportunity to trick unsuspecting job aspirants, luring them with fake job offers.

Trend Micro's Product Marketing Manager, Abhinav Karnwal, said that continuously mounting unemployment has resulted in more people applying online for jobs both through individual corporate sites and online job aggregators. Thus, job portals have turned into a gold mine for scammers eyeing on the personal information of people, reported techtree.com on August 17, 2009.

The security firm has advised that instead of posting resumes on a job portal, job seekers should directly contact the employers, thereby evading the possible identity theft.

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» SPAMfighter News - 8/28/2009