Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Beware execcareerhunt.com

I just received the following email:
Your resume came to me through one of our partners and we would like to set an appointment to meet with you. At Advantage Associates California, we help build relationships to assist senior executives and managers find the best jobs in the San Jose area. We steward our clients careers, maximizing their earning potential and job satisfaction.

We provide unique tools and technology that assist our clients in identifying and pursuing the best career opportunities.

If you are interested in learning more, please reply to sanjose@execcareerhunt.com and attach the most current version of your resume and we will call you to set a time to meet.

Robin
Executive Administrator

If you would like to be removed from receiving any more emails, please reply back with unsubscribe in the subject line.
I immediately became suspicious:
  1. Who are they and where did they get my personal address?
  2. Why would anyone serious sign with just his first name?
  3. Why is the company called "Advantage Associates California", yet the address says "execcareerhunt.com"?
  4. Why does the last line offer the opportunity to "unsubscribe" - like any other spam email?
  5. Finally, the domain execcareerhunt.com does not return any HTML page.
A very short Google search later, I found this great post in the Geeks-R-Us blog, detailing all you need to know about these scammers. The amount of comments show many other people received this email or fell for it. One of the comments actually explains how to reseach these scam domains safely, using Telnet instead of your browser.

Bottom line: Beware unsolicited email (and Nigerian dignitaries who would like to share their ill-gained profits with you lol).

Important note: while GMail didn't flag this email as spam, Windows Live Mail did. Good job Microsoft.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the post. I just received one of their emails & was immediately suspicious. I found your blog which confirmed my thoughts.

Anonymous said...

Thanks! I too received this e-mail. My guess is that they retrieved my e-mail addy from CareerBuilder or Monster.

Unknown said...

I received this mail, too. Thanks for the message.

Anonymous said...

I also got this e-mail - but after being scammed by another company selling "free" grant CD's and losing $98.00 - I checked this out first and got your blog. I am also on CareerBuilder and Monster.Thanks.