It seems that nowhere on the web is safe from criminal hackers, the latest news story being that Monster.com has been compromised and the intimate ID details of 1.6 million candidates are now in the hands of hackers and spammers.
The perpetrators targeted the secure areas for employers and recruiters and used their login details to search for candidate details. With the captured information they have now have access to a vast amount of job searchers to whom they can target spam emails and phishing emails.
So far there are reports of one phishing email containing the Trojan.Gpcoder.E, which looks very realistic and urges the recipient to download a new job searching tool from Monster which in fact contains the trojan. It then encrypts important files on the user's computer and demands a 'ransom' to have them unencrypted. With so many personal details of the intended recipients it's easy to see how these bogus mailings can be interpreted as genuine.
What can you do?
This is worrying indeed and there is not much a job searcher can do to protect yourself apart from be very vigilant and suspect of emails from Monster.com - or anywhere else that contain personal information and encourage the downloading of files. To quote the Symantec security response:
"To protect your identity when using recruitment sites, or at least limit your exposure to identity theft, you should limit the contact information you post on these sites, use a separate disposable email address and never disclose sensitive details such as your Social Security number, passport or driver's license numbers, bank account information, etc to prospective employers until you have established they are legitimate."
It seems that any such site that stores the personal details of a large number of people is a target for hackers and spammers, it was just a matter of time before large job search websites got hit.
What a Coincidence
Coincidentally the team here at First-Computer-Job.com are working on a new job searching tool that actually removes the need to create an account and log in to any job site. It's all a bit hush hush at the moment and won't be ready for a couple of months but we're very excited about it.
Not only will it save huge amounts of time and effort on the part of the job searcher but it will also make you approach your job search campaign in a way that sales and marketing professionals approach their ad campaigns.
OK I've said too much but if you're interested to know more there will be a new free report coming out soon that will outline the concepts behind this new product, the need for it, the problems faced by online job searchers today and the future of job hunting on the Internet.
The report will be out hopefully this weekend and you won't want to miss it- so keep an eye on your inbox (for a genuine F-C-J newsletter!) for details. If you're not signed up - you can get in here:
Sign Up To Hear About the Next Free Report Here
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Ever get that feeling of 'can't learn it all quick enough'? In IT there is just so much to take in both technical and non technical and when you see the people at the top who seem to know it all you just want to get to that level as quickly as possible.
You can try and cram your way through intensive learn it quick courses but they won't help you get to that level any quicker.
For me I've found that by far the best way to pick stuff up is to learn by doing. In my field of Cisco networking, storage area networks, clusters, load balancers and highly complex data centres I'm lucky enough to be in one with a very hands-on role.
If you don't have access to the toys you want to play with you can always find an emulator or build a home lab out of a few PCs, a switch and some evaluation software. One of my tasks at the moment is to set up a server monitoring system that is 100% free which happens to run on Linux which is also free (it's called Nagios if you're interested and it runs on Fedora)
Those people at the top who seem to know everything do so out of experience and getting their hands dirty.. and there's nothing to stop you learning the same way:
Microsoft Trial Dowloads
Fedora Linux
Nagios Network Monitoring
Sourceforge
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