A former marketing executive, out of work for nearly a year, finds a job posting that seems perfect for him. It’s a job with a leading international insurance broker, and after sending his resume in, he receives an e-mail from the human resources manager, saying the company is interested in him, and that he just needs to submit some information for a background check. So he submits his age, height, weight, Social Security number, bank account number and mother’s maiden name.

But it was all just an elaborate scam designed to steal his identity.

When looking for a job, most people are more than willing to jump through the hoops presented by employers in order to obtain a much-needed job. There are no numbers on how many people fall victim to this type of scam each year, but with the economy being what it is, there are sure to be thousands of victims. There are some things you should be aware of when conducting an online job search.

First, do not give your Social Security number to any prospective employer, regardless of the reasons they give for asking for it. You should not surrender your bank or credit card numbers either.

Carefully review the ad, looking for bad spelling, grammatical errors and awkward sentence structure. This could be a clue that the ad is fraudulent. If you respond to an ad, and receive a response from an individual, that person’s e-mail address should not be a private one. A real human resources employee or manager would use a company-issued address.

Check with the company that supposedly listed the job posting, and make sure it is a legitimate posting, and that the person who is corresponding with you actually is employed by the company.

Last, if a person claiming to be a company representative asks for you to remit a payment of any kind, discontinue the correspondence immediately. No employer would ever have any reason to ask for payment from you during an employment screening process.

You can also check with the Better Business Bureau in order to find out if the company is legitimate, and if there are any grievances filed against it.

Tags: Identity Theft, scams

This entry was posted on Friday, August 6th, 2010 at 3:25 am and is filed under Identity Theft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.