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A New Twist to the Online Job Search Scam
With the country’s current economic position coupled with the fluctuating unemployment rate, people are searching and posting for jobs all over the internet. Unfortunately, criminals have taken notice.
The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reports they have “recently received over 250 complaints reporting a new twist to the online employment scam. The scam involves people who responded to online ads or were contacted via e-mail as a result of their resume being posted on job websites. The perpetrator posed as a research company, and asked people to complete a paid survey about services provided at wire transfer locations to improve the effectiveness of the company’s money-transfer services.”
Per the IC3, this is how the scam happens:
- Victims received a cashier’s check or money order in the mail and instructed to deposit it, keep a small fee and wire the rest to another recipient
- Then they were told to send the information about the wire transfer to the “employer”, and fill out a survey about the wire transfer experience
- Victims threatened with jail time if they do not follow through promptly
- Shortly after the transaction, the bank informs victims that the cashier’s check or money order was fraudulent, and the victim is responsible for paying the money back
If you do fall victim to any scam, contact the Internet Crime Complaint Center as your complaints can help lead to investigations and prosecutions.
You’ve worked hard and you’ve earned your vacation. And in a perfect world, you could simply leave your device at home and forget about reality. But who are we kidding anyway?
That’s why we’ve put together these 5 simple travel tips to help you keep your vacation free of identity thieves and infected devices:
1. Watch where you WiFi
It can be tempting to take advantage of free WiFi access points in airports, hotels, or in cafes, but resist the urge to use those connections to do anything other than browse for a map or train schedule.
Unsecured wireless connections – such as the open ones that some businesses provide as a service – can also leave you vulnerable to wireless snooping of your logins, email messages, or instant messages by other travelers or guests. The same can be said for untrusted computers in hotel business centers or cybercafes, which are magnets for data-stealing malware.
If the connection doesn’t ask you to provide a WPA key, assume the connection is not secure, and treat it as such. If you must use a free wireless connection, turn off any programs that automatically connect to the Internet (such as email clients or file-sharing tools) before you hook up, and try to access sites by typing “https” at the beginning of the URL.
Lastly, please don’t use the untrustworthy PC in the hotel lobby to do anything more private than print your boarding pass to get home.
2. Set up automatic bill-pay for your regular bills before you leave
Being able to pay all of your bills online may leave you complacent about doing so in a public place, but you really shouldn’t be logging into your bank and cutting electronic checks for your utility bills while you’re on the road. Most banks offer free automatic bill payment services. Take advantage of them if they’re available, so you don’t miss a monthly charge.
If, for some reason, you can’t set up automatic bill payment, try paying off your bills just before you leave, or pay more than the monthly total if you’ll still be travelling during the end of your next billing cycle.
If you must pay a bill online while you’re on vacation, create a temporary password and change it as soon as you return home. (Click here for help with passwords)
3. Back up everything on any device you intend to bring
Laptops aren’t the only data-rich devices we carry around anymore. Increasingly, we’re carrying sensitive data on our MP3 players, portable hard drives and thumbdrives, and smartphones (and the tiny memory cards inside of them), simply because it’s convenient to do so.
Don’t wait until disaster strikes and you realize you’ve left your iPhone in a taxi in another state (or worse, another country). Back up everything, as if you might never see the device again, before you hit the road.
You should also password protect your devices. If you have a laptop, set up a login to access your desktop. If you have a mobile device, set up your access code. It may also be a good idea to install an app that remotely wipes your data–just in case your device grows legs and wanders off.
4. Don’t post your vacation plans on your social networks
It may seem fun to brag to friends and acquaintances on social networks about your upcoming trip to a beach-party paradise, but you might want to resist the temptation to call too much attention to the fact that you’re leaving behind an empty, unattended apartment or house for weeks at a time.
Burglars have already begun to turn to Facebook and Twitter to find homes that may be vacant during a holiday absence. Don’t make their job any easier for them by giving them your travel itinerary. Of course, if you feel compelled to post vacation snaps on the road, modify your privacy settings so only your closest friends see those notifications. At least then you’ll have a starting point for the police when they begin investigating the burglary of your home.
And speaking of social networks, it’s a best practice to copy and paste links instead of clicking on social sharing icons while you’re on vacation. Using these icons opens the risk of likejacking or clickjacking scams that can gain access to your accounts from weaknesses in your Internet browser.
5. Keep your devices on your person at all times
If you absolutely must bring along a laptop, plan on keeping the laptop with you at all times, or at the very least locking it in a room safe (or in the hotel’s safe, if there isn’t one in your room) if you don’t want to get sand in the DVD drive.
Zappos data breach exposed names and email addresses
Earlier this year, a criminal accessed Zappos consumer account information and may have gained access to “your name, email address, billing and shipping addresses, phone number, the last four digits of your credit card number (the standard information you find on receipts), and/or your cryptographically scrambled password (but not your actual password)” through one of the company’s Kentucky servers
The company said its database storing payment information, such as credit card data, was not “affected or accessed.”
In a company-wide email and embedded in the blog post, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh said, “Within the next hour, we will begin the process of notifying the 24+ million customer accounts in our database about the incident and help step them through the process of choosing a new password for their accounts. (We’ve already reset and expired their existing passwords.)”
Zappos directed customers to a dedicated landing page for assistance in changing their passwords.
The Zappos breach is less than a year removed from two high-profile breaches that occurred last spring. Email marketing vendor Epsilon said in April that the names and email information of 2% of its total client base had been compromised. And in May Sony Corp. said hackers may have accessed information — such as names, addresses, email addresses, birth dates and phone numbers — for 101.6 million customers.
Motorola sold refurbished Xooms without deleting previous owners’ data
Usually, when passwords and personal information are exposed, it’s because someone hacked a company’s not-so-secure system. Motorola, however, managed to put people’s info at risk without such malfeasance when it failed to wipe the memory of a batch of refurbished Xooms. The tablets in question were sold by Woot.com between October and December of last year.
Motorola is actively pursuing the return of the impacted refurbished units to ensure that the memory of each device is cleared. Customers who purchased a refurbished Motorola XOOM Wi-Fi tablet from Woot.com between October and December 2011 are encouraged to visit motorola.com/xoomreturn or to call Motorola Mobility Customer Support at 1-800-734-5870, select Option 1, in order to determine if their tablet is affected.
In further attempt to make ammends, Motorola is offering two years of Experian identification protection services to those whose info was exposed. Original owners are advised to contact Experian at 1-866-926-9803 to sign up for the credit monitoring service. These original owners are also advised to take precautionary measures to protect their identity, such as changing their email and social media passwords.