Posts Tagged job spam
Laser Hair Removal Technician Spam
Being an IT guy (with heavy web development under my belt) I rarely venture out to other fields. However, my personal life brings insights to totally different fields.
As my girlfriend wife is looking for a aesthetician / laser hair removal tech position and professional makeup gigs, we constantly check for job ads on craigslist. Yesterday we stumbled on pretty decent ad that promised (obviously exaggerating a bit) a nice spot for someone with similar background. Naturally, we responded to the ad.
Next day there was an answer laying in my wife’s mailbox, stating that in order to proceed she needs to fill out some form on the web. While such practice is not uncommon for really large companies, going through same routine to get a job at a local doctor’s office or spa smelled fishy to me. The link - quickstrikecareers.com?(numbers) – added to pile of suspicions. I checked whois for this domain (I’m a techie, remember?) and the pile of suspicion (domain uses anonymizing service from Network Solutions, not a reputable organization by itself) got so big I couldn’t see the reason to continue investigation behind it. I did, however, google search for this domain. Out of six search results four were clearly stating that this domain is involved in some sort of scam that gathers applicant’s data and then annoys them with unsolicited calls about various career-related services.
While this bait-and-switch technique isn’t right all by itself, playing people, who (due to recent economy evens) may be desperate trying to get a job and pay their bills is pure thievery.
By the way, the ad has already been taken down by craigslist. Good job.
Job Spam Update
If you think those guys have stopped – think again. Latest trend for job-related spam runs with totally new and improved subjects: “There’s a <insert job position here> you might qualify for!“.
Of course, there’s an old URL that is giving this junk away – the cmanager2.aspx?em= followed by your e-mail. Funny as it is, the Spam Assassin already learned to catch this as a spam, so these arrive in my inbox already labeled as SPAM.
Be warned.
P.S. Additionally, if you don’t have a luxury to config your own anti-spam solution, a simple rule for Outlook/Thunderbird/any other e-mail client (including web mail) would suffice, just filter out e-mails that contain the above mentioned line in the body of the message and you should be alright.
A Word On Spam
If you think the job searcher niche lacks spam – think again! Just think of it – while most of the places are dying to pry at least an e-mail address from your hands, in job market you are freely giving it away. With addition to other means to contact you (usually a phone number and address) and full job history. No wonder spammers are eager to exploit such fruitful market.
Personally, I observe two major sources of spam. I am not sure about the origins, but there is a sure way to identifiy either source.
First source – I call it “stupid enough” – is sending out legit-looking e-mails originating from something.industrywebhostingNNN.com, where NNN is usually a three or four digit number. Few years ago (yep, it’s that old) I did a little research on who these domain names belong to and didn’t find any kind of result sufficient enough to furnish them a copy of my resume. Luckily, any anti-spam filter, given proper training, easily spots these messages and filters them out.
Second source – I call it “not sneaky enough”- comes from various domains and “users” (I don’t believe these users are actually exist). What gives it away is the URL for resume submission, it ends with cmanager.aspx?email= following your e-mail and some other information. Personally, I haven’t clicked on that link lately, so I don’t know what awaits you on the other side, but from my perspective it’s not worth the risk and it’s not worth the time. A simple search on Google yields plenty of reasons to stay away from this link. Most of them seem to be associated with “powerjobapp” site or service.
More then just that, there are some rogue recruiters who turn into spammers trying to solicit their services to candidates. One of today’s doses of spam came from JobServe, titled “You’re missing out on thousands of new job opportunities“. Attached was a list of 50 jobs covering everything from web development to administration to tech support. Of course I don’t want to dig through this pile of nonsense to figure out if there’s anything interesting.
What surprises me is how little do these guys are willing to do in order to get their money.They throw you a piece of garbage and expect you to jump on it and start acting like it’s the best opportunity in town. Luckily, the overall number of recruiters far supercedes the actual number one would need. All you have to do is stay away from spam.