Contract Employment Weekly forging my email address

A couple of weeks ago, I started getting various replies to emails I had never sent. Apparently someone was sending emails with the From field set to my name and the email address I list on my web page -- an address that I only use for receiving email, never sending.

It turns out that Contract Employment Weekly (see website at

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) grabbed part of my resume off my website and has been sending it to employers while forging my name and email address in the From field.

Needless to say, I never signed up with them, much less gave them permission to send out a copy of my resume with 90% of it missing while pretending to be me.

They even admit to doing this in their disclaimer (

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)!

...Your contact information might be provided to a recruiter under the following circumstances: 1. You have a resume online and a staffing firm views the resume as part of a skills search...

Which, it seems, means that they think that the fact that my resume is online means that pretending to be me, forging my email address, and sending out a bastardized version without my permission is OK.

--
Guy Macon
Reply to
Guy Macon
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BTW, It should be noted that spambots have never grabbed the email address on my webpage and send spam to it, because the HTML source looks like this:

&# 103;uy705449@Gu yMacon.com/

Besides the various ways of hex encoding characters etc. and the embedded comments that contain email addresses, the span class= "rtl" invokes a CSS feature which transforms left-to-right text into right-to-left text (useful for Hebrew webpages). You can see the resulting clickable email link at .

Alas, that doesn't help when a human cuts and pasts the webpage into notepad...

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Guy Macon
Reply to
Guy Macon

Report them to the police. And make employers add them to their spam filter? (the last one might actually be quite damaging :-)

No previous history with ceweekly.com I presume?

Reply to
sky465nm

None whatsoever. I didn't know they existed until they started pretending to be me.

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Guy Macon
Reply to
Guy Macon

If they are doing this for commercial gain they have to be publicizing some sort of valid address. That should enable you to complain to whatever is propagating their message, and get them removed. I do not consider this in the least bit funny.

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CBFalconer

Guy Macon wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

How can that be legal...? Isn't it a form of identity theft?

Reply to
Kris Krieger

I doubt that it is.

I'd think so.

But, they are head-hunters, so what's legal (or honest) probably doesn't enter into their calculations...

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Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! I'm having a
                                  at               quadrophonic sensation
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Reply to
Grant Edwards

Probably not, but it is a copyright violation, so you can stop them dead in their tracks.

Reply to
PeterD

Grant Edwards wrote in news:LYudna44nb0fKD3VnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@posted.visi:

True enough.

All they think is "Commission". What I love is the ones who call when all they did was look at the ads in the back of a professional journal, trying to collect a commission by assuming that a professional is too stupid to be able to read the ads in the back of the journals :p I know someone who gets that rather a lot.

But sending info by posing as someone they are not - that has got to be illegal...

Reply to
Kris Krieger

There is something particularly stupid about Contract Employment Weekly is doing here. Normally, dishonest headhunters (there are honest headhunters, but the 99% who are crooks give the others a bad name) like to grab my resume, delete my name, email address, website URL, etc. and send it to an employer without asking me, thus attempting to make the employer pay them to find me. These idiots are sending the resume out with full contact info and using my email address, which means that anyone responding will reach me and not them! How stupid is that?

It's not like any employer is going to actually read a resume that is part of a spam run of thousands of resumes; the only result is that an email address I never send email from gets filtered as a spammer and I get a bunch of out-of-office and mailbox-full autoreplies.

The question is, what do I do about it?

--
Guy Macon
Reply to
Guy Macon
[snip]

Please watch your attributions. Your last post quoted 22 lines written by me with no "Guy Macon Wrote" to signify who wrote them. Thanks!

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Guy Macon
Reply to
Guy Macon

Guy Macon wrote in news:sPGdnSxFEbrQUD3VRVn snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

[snip]

Be sure that, if any potential employer calls, you thank them for their interest and ask them how they got your information.

THe only other thing I can think of is contact teh Post Office, for one, because I *think* tht what tehy're doing (posing as you) might be considered Mail Fraud. If they can't handle it, they might know who can.

I'm out of contact for a few days with the person I know who might have a better answer.

Meanwhile;

(1)

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TITLE LXII CRIMINAL CODE CHAPTER 638 FRAUD Identity Fraud Section 638:26 638:26 Identity Fraud. ? I. A person is guilty of identity fraud when the person: (a) Poses as another person with the purpose to defraud in order to obtain money, credit, goods, services, or anything else of value; (b) Obtains or records personal identifying information about another person without the express authorization of such person, with the intent to pose as such person; (c) Obtains or records personal identifying information about a person without the express authorization of such person in order to assist another to pose as such person; or (d) Poses as another person, without the express authorization of such person, with the purpose of obtaining confidential information about such person that is not available to the general public. II. Identity fraud is a class A felony. III. A person found guilty of violating any provisions of this section shall, in addition to the penalty under paragraph II, be ordered to make restitution for economic loss sustained by a victim as a result of such violation. Source. 1999, 239:1. 2004, 233:1, eff. June 11, 2004.

(2) I don't know whetehr this is of use to you but just in case:

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(National Conference of State Legislatures - introduced laws re: identity theft)

(3) Search of usa.gov - list of articles (I didn't read tehm all!)

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What is ID fraud? page

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A report of a case of email/spamming fraud that might be of interest to you:

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At the bottom is a contact: "For additional information please contact Emily Langlie, Public Affairs Officer for the United States Attorney?s Office, at (206) 553-4110."

From that, into the search box of firstgov.gov, I plugged in contact United States Attorney's Office, but I don't knwo where you live so here is teh results page, listing various regional contact offices:

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99s+Office

Although these clowns aren't trying to bilk *you* of $$, they are definitely trying to bilk $$ (in un-earned commission payments) out of the *companies* they're spamming (while posing as you), and it is still fraud, adn at that, a few differnt types of fraud all rolled into one.

HTH!

- Kris

Reply to
Kris Krieger

Indeed. Even the ones who send out one's resume with permission generally insist on putting the headhunter's address/phone number on it instead of the candidates.

It certainly doesn't make much sense to me. I don't see how they think they're going to make anything from it.

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Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  FIRST, I was in a
                                  at               TRUCK...THEN, I was in
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Reply to
Grant Edwards

Yes, that's pretty stupid. But are they sending it out as you, or just sending it out *for* you? Do they in any way indicate that they were a middle man? I get the impression that they are getting paid for making the links without it being a direct commission... rather more like a paid ad. But they can charge more if they can show more responses. Actually, that wouldn't require that they show that they were the middle man if the ad was an exclusive.

If they really aren't reading any of the resume that they are copying, you can include hidden text that will get copied along with the visible text. One way to do that is to have text on your page that is the same color as the background and in a small font (to not take up a lot of room). It won't show up on your web page because of the colors, but will likely show up depending on how it is copied and pasted.

Rick

Reply to
rickman

They are doing it like this:

From: "Guy Macon" Sender: "Resume Agent" To: [obfuscated] Reply-To:

Greetings, Advertiser!

You are receiving this resume (Guy Macon) because your office is a current advertiser in Contract Employment Weekly magazine or on the ContractJobHunter.com website.

Thanks,

The staff of C.E. Publications

(.txt attachment has about 10% of my resume)

Already doing that, using CSS (a better solution than invisible fonts). Go to guymacon.com, select all, cut and then past to a text editor. note that the bottom few lines change. It changes when you print it as well.

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Guy Macon
Reply to
Guy Macon

I would reply to the companies, thank them for their interest, then tell them the people who contacted them are running a scam on them and a lot of other companies that have been sent your information, without your permission. If word spreads enough, no one will even open any email they send.

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Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Well there you go! They are making it look like the advertisement got them your resume. They don't need to be the middle man. They have already been paid. They just need to generate enough resume traffic to make the company think it was worth the price. If you contact the company and let them know what happened, it will backfire on the web site.

Rick

Reply to
rickman

As soon as I read the above, the "Aha!" hit me. Thanks!

[1] Company adertises in Employment Weekly magazine. [2] Company gets resumes, supposedly responses to the ad, but actually scraped off the web by an Employment Weekly magazine employee and sent with forged email addresses. [3] Company assumes that people are reading the ads and responding to them.

So all I have to do to really screw with them for pretending to be me is...

[4] I write up a nicely worded, calm and rational statement exposing the scam and telling them that any resumes from me are forgeries generated by Employment Weekly magazine, then to send it to all of those advertisers. [5] PROFIT!! (
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)
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Guy Macon
Reply to
Guy Macon

UPDATE:

On 11 Aug 2008 I reported the following:

| | A couple of weeks ago, I started getting various replies to emails | I had never sent. Apparently someone was sending emails with the | From field set to my name and the email address I list on my web | page -- an address that I only use for receiving email, never | sending. | | It turns out that Contract Employment Weekly (see website at |

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) has been sending an edited version | of my resume to employers while forging my name and email | address in the From field. | | Needless to say, I never signed up with them, much less gave | them permission to send out a copy of my resume with 90% of it | missing while pretending to be me. | | Their disclaimer (
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) says: | | ...Your contact information might be provided to a | recruiter under the following circumstances: 1. You | have a resume online and a staffing firm views the | resume as part of a skills search... | | Which, it seems, means that they think that the fact | that my resume is online means that pretending to be | me, forging my email address, and sending out a | bastardized version without my permission is OK. | ... | The emails look like this:: | | From: "Guy Macon" | Sender: "Resume Agent" | To: [I got copies from three of their advertisers] | Reply-To: | | Greetings, Advertiser! | | You are receiving this resume (Guy Macon) | because your office is a current advertiser in Contract | Employment Weekly magazine or on the ContractJobHunter.com | website. | | Thanks, | | The staff of C.E. Publications | | (Heavily edited .txt attachment containing about 10% | of my resume was attached) ... | [1] Company advertises in Contract Employment Weekly magazine. | | [2] Company gets resumes, supposedly responses to the ad, | but actually scraped off the web by an Employment | Weekly magazine employee and sent with forged email | addresses. | | [3] Company assumes that people are reading the ads and | responding to them. | | So all I have to do to really screw with them for pretending | to be me is... | | [4] Write up a nicely worded, calm and rational statement | exposing the scam and telling them that any resumes from | me are forgeries generated by Employment Weekly magazine, | then to send it to all of those advertisers. | ...which I proceeded to do whenever I got a bounced email or out-of-office autoreply back from one of the forgeries.

This morning (08 Sep 2008) I got a call from Employment Weekly Magazine to discuss my complaint. We had a quite reasonable discussion, and established the following:

[A] They apologized and will not forge my name or email address in any future mailings. [B] Someone who I never heard of living in another state signed me up -- twice. CEW gave me the name, address, phone number and IP Address used to do the signup. I am currently investigating to see whether this was someone who thought they were doing me a favor or something else. [C] I advised them about confirmed opt-in practices. I didn't expect them to agree on the spot, but they will take it under advisement. For the record, I have repeated my advice below and attached some URLs referencing the right way to manage a mailing list.

From this I conclude that the folks at Contract Employment Weekly are *not* scammers, but are instead a legitimate outfit that adopted some bad practices out of ignorance.

What CEW should do in the future (detailed in the URLs below) is to send an a single email with a non-forgable token asking for permission before sending anyone email or before sending email on anyone's behalf. If there is no reply indicating express permission, they should take that name off their list.

HOW TO DO EMAIL LISTS THE RIGHT WAY: Mail Abuse Prevention Systems (MAPS): Guidelines for proper mailing list management

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Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE):
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Clueless Mailer's Guidelines for mailing list management:
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Mailing Lists vs. Spam Lists:
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Opt-in vs. Opt Out:
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What is the right way to send bulk e-mail?
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conducting a Permission Pass:
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Confirmed Opt-In is not Dead After All:
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Double Opt-in How-To:
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Permission and email marketing:
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Email Sender and Provider Coalition Best Practices Guide:
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Spam threatens the e-mail channel:
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Spam is the problem, you're the solution:
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MAAWG Sender Best Communications Practices:
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ESPC Best Practices Guide:
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I hope that sometime in the future Contract Employment Weekly will email me confirming that they have adopted the above practices. I will report here when and if they do.

--
Guy Macon
Reply to
Guy Macon

[snip]
[snip]

That seems stupid. They seem to be cutting themselves out of the loop between you and potential employers. If someone likes your resume, they begin corresponding with you and may be unaware that CEW originated the contact. Perhaps they do this because their fees are high and employers hesitate to consider their referrals. But if the forgery is effective, how will they ever prove they made the referral to collect?

Some outfits offer a finder's fee to the referrer if they place a candidate. So this third party is mining web sites and spamming employment agencies as a means of making money.

I tried posting a resume to a few on-line boards a while back. But I found that the offers I got weren't worth pursuing. I like to maintain more control over the jobs I bid on than just sitting around waiting for some web crawler to pop my name up. If a company isn't going to do their homework on who's who in their business, I probably wouldn't be a good fit.

--
Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
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