According to a recent U.S. Labor Department report, 2.6 million people lost jobs in 2008, the highest yearly job-loss total since 1945, the year World War II ended. As if job seekers didn’t have enough to worry about while trying to find work in the worst job market in six decades, criminals have given them yet another problem to deal with: protecting personal information.
In today’s computer age, most job seekers look for work not by “pounding the pavement” but instead by posting resumes and entering personal information at job sites online. The importance of protecting personal information became more apparent to job seekers recently when Monster.com, the largest job search engine in the world, revealed criminals had attacked their database and stolen personal information such as user names, phone numbers, IDs, passwords, and email addresses. While the personal information taken from job seekers did not include social security numbers (which Monster.com doesn’t usually collect), it is obvious that criminals can and will access such personal information if it is available to them.
This is only the most recent case of criminals stealing personal information from Monster.com’s database, which contains over a million job postings and 150 million resumes from job seekers. Even more troubling, an anti-spam firm has warned in its 2009 threat forecast report that criminals will increase their focus on employment sites such as Monster, LinkedIn, and CareerBuilder during the economic downturn because the increased traffic will also increase personal information shared by job seekers.
Protecting personal information from criminals is a must for all people, but especially for job seekers entering sensitive personal information on multiple job sites online. The last thing job seekers need to deal with while looking for work is the theft of personal information. MyBackgroundCheck.com – a personal information management service and a member of the Pre-Employ.com Family of Companies – empowers job seekers to take control of their personal information. With a MyBackgroundCheck.com account, job seekers can view, manage, and protect personal information, check credit scores, and prevent criminal identity theft. MyBackgroundCheck.com helps job seekers keep their personal information current, accurate, and secure.
Job seekers who wish to know more about protecting personal information may visit www.MyBackgroundCheck.com, email info@mybackgroundcheck.com, or call 1-800-503-2364. To create a MyBackgroundCheck.com account, please go to https://www.mybackgroundcheck.com/order/CreateApplicant.aspx.
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