Email Scams Target Job Seekers

By Stephanie Jordan
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Yesterday Red Condor, a provider of hybrid email security solutions, issued a warning to email users about the latest email security scams that prey on people looking for employment. Among the scams are emails that claim to be offering employment from familiar, reputable companies such as Pepsi and Starbucks, or masquerade as messages from real job sites like CareerBuilder or Monster.com. Red Condor cautions that fake employment offers frequently involve “payment processing” requests, which give scammers an excuse to ask for a respondent’s bank account information. The company reports that craigslist is also being used to post fake job ads.

“Unfortunately, as with all phishing attacks, there is no legitimate employment offer coming, and victims have either given their personal information or money to unknown, deceitful sources,” comments Dr. Tom Steding, chief executive officer of Red Condor. “Spammers are once again demonstrating that nothing is off limits as they focus their efforts on the millions of people that are unemployed and looking for work. Organizations need to ensure that they have adequate email security and filtering technology to stop these types of emails before they breach their companies’ networks.”

Published August 6, 2009