Gullible suburban mother of four regularly duped in her half-century life. Exploring hoaxes and schemes as the ExSCAMiner, she attempts answering the nagging question: Should I have fallen for that? Got scam tips, email Karin at ScamExaminer@gmail.com.

More Articles
Topics

Hurricane damage continues with recovery fraud

He did what?!? Presidential campaign smears

Male enhancement matters to scammers

Best (also worst) inheritance scam

Does your city rank on reporting fraud?

Better Business Bureau

Dept. of Health and Human Services

Multi-level marketing

Examiner Feeds

These websites were picked by the Scam Examiner as useful resources.

View: All Sources

Funny Money

Snopes (Latest Urban Legends) - 4 hrs ago

What Does Obama Read?

Snopes (Latest Urban Legends) - 1 day ago

Bruce Delburg Appeal

Snopes (Latest Urban Legends) - 2 days ago

Joe Biden's Debts

Snopes (Latest Urban Legends) - 2 days ago

Bad Review

Snopes (Latest Urban Legends) - 3 days ago

Reporting scams online (no postage required)

Checking Stuff Out

E-mail addresses

Directly forward unsolicited commercial e-mail to SPAM@UCD.gov

National Examiners

Amos Wright
Conservative Politics Examiner
Most Recent Post
UCLA Economists' Warning To Be Completely Ignored

Michelle Kerns
Book Examiner
Most Recent Post
Swedes hand the Nobel Prize in Literature to Frenchman Le Clezio and insults to Americans

Charlie Papazian
Beer Examiner
Most Recent Post
Planning for the 2009 Great American Beer Festival begins in the meantime 2008 Competition results

Patricia Phillips
Space News Examiner
Most Recent Post
Space dynasty? Richard Garriott & Owen Garriott discuss Sunday's Soyuz launch

Ruth Manuel-Logan
Auto Examiner
Most Recent Post
Where did all the dealerships go?

Browse All Examiners

Find the Examiners
writing about your
favorite topics.

Find Examiners »

Job seekers vulnerable to identity theft

Add a Comment

July 8, 9:08 PM

by Karin Malchow, Scam Examiner

Apparently, we have no choice but to tolerate CAPTCHAs.

Monster.com has experienced resume information breaches before. In 2007, a Trojan Horse program using stolen employee codes tapped 1.5 million users.

This time the pool is larger. A Russian group called Phreak offers "identity harvesting services" on underground scammer forums, promising to extract personal information from CVs on a number of job-seeking sites, including Monster, AOL Jobs, Hot Jobs and MilitaryJobs.com.

Jacques Erasmus, research director at Prevx, an internet security firm, offers that the latest job site identity harvesting could be circumvented by limiting the number of recruiter searches. Wouldn't that kind of defeat the websites' purpose?

He also suggests CAPTCHAs, a tortured acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." The Scam Examiner prefers the acronym ABAs for "Adjust Bifocals Again."

Seeking a job online? Monster recommends not giving too much proprietary information until you're at the Human Resource Manager's desk. And he doesn't need to know your bank account.

Topics: Identity Theft , job-seeking websites , internet security

Feed

Comments

Hurricane damage continues with recovery fraud

1 comment

October 9, 7:19 AM

Pre-Hurricane Gustav and Ike, scammers opened their usual bag of tricks: sending phishing e-mails to area residents under the guise of confirming bank information and setting up fake relief charity websites. Post-hurricane, the scammer deluge... Read More
Topics: fraud , FBI

He did what?!? Presidential campaign smears

4 comments

October 6, 9:32 PM

Whether presidential campaign smears come from pamphlets, letters, chants, television advertising, telephone push polls, internet rumors, campaign officials or supporters, people keep falling for them. According to rumors or accusations, which presidential... Read More
Topics: politics

Male enhancement matters to scammers

1 comment

October 4, 4:26 PM

MSN Health reported a preliminary Italian study suggesting an ancient Chinese herbal aphrodisiac could be a natural alternative to Viagra and other pharmaceuticals treating Erectile Dysfunction. Spamming internet scammers are likely to latch onto... Read More
Topics: E-mail

Best (also worst) inheritance scam

1 comment

October 1, 2:10 PM

Tales of estates snarled by bureaucracy still flood e-mail inboxes; a share of the vast fortune only requires immediate cash to either cheated heirs or estate locators for money transfer fees or bribes. The internet version of the inheritance scam... Read More

Does your city rank on reporting fraud?

Add a Comment

September 30, 12:12 AM

The Federal Trade Commission maintains a Consumer Sentinel database collecting complaints from 125 organizations, including the Better Business Bureau, the Internet Crime Complaint Center and the US Postal Inspection Service. The individual consumer... Read More
Topics: fraud , Identity Theft , FTC

Life after death

2 comments

September 26, 11:48 AM

A recap of insurance fraud items in the September 2008 news:Dead men don't go to the doctor.When Ahmad Akhtary's British ex-wife attempted to claim £300,000 insurance after reporting his death in Afghanistan, a couple items tripped up the scheme. ... Read More
Topics: fraud

Famous people confess badly kept secrets

3 comments

September 24, 3:36 PM

AP/People In honor of Clay Aiken's sexual orientation confirmation and Lindsay Lohan-Samantha Ronson dating relationship acknowledgement, here are some other not-so-startling celebrity revelations. Whether those in the public eye... Read More
Topics: suspicion

Keeping your head during economic strife

Add a Comment

September 21, 9:13 PM

Whether one believes the U.S. economy is a house of cards or undergoing a cyclical correction, a Ponzi scheme facsimile or fundamentally sound, a dose of Frank Capra is always fun. According to an MSN-Zogby poll, most people are taking recent economic... Read More
Topics: movies

Moving company pirates hold stuff hostage

1 comment

September 19, 9:33 PM

Unscrupulous moving companies and drivers are hijacking people's belongings and demanding ransom. The scam goes like this:After entering into a contract with a moving company for interstate relocation, possessions are loaded into a truck. ... Read More
Topics: fraud