Jobs.ie Security Breached.

ntlbell

BostonB wrote: »

Why would you have your PPS on your CV?

I was thinking this myself.

Why have anything personal on it.

Mine has my name and my phone number that;s it.

There's no real need for your age pps address or anything else

board om

BostonB wrote: »

You need more than a PPS to avail of social welfare and other services, and to able to work here. So many people give the wrong ones, by mistake and deliberately they cross check everything.

i know that, but i assume they put it on the CV so when HR open the CV they dont see the candidate is from kazikstan and close the CV without reading it becuase they think the candidate needs sponsorship. if there is a PPS number then HR will see that they are able to work here and will at least consider the candidate.

thats the only reason i can think of for having it on the CV. i dont know any Irish people who do it, it is usualy done by foreigners.

there may be another reason i am unaware of.

board om

actually now that i think of it, across europe there is a standard CV template that most people use. the CV has to be layed out a certain way and contain certain details, and they must have their photo on it. there is even a little EU flag on it. so it might be a requirment and they just carry on the practice when they go to diffenrt countries, because i have never seen anyone from ireland or the uk do it.

chickenchaser

I've gotten 2 mails from recruitment agencies I hadn't signed up to before since the jobs.ie data breach. And these are agencies that are on jobs.ie.

Anyone else been getting spammed?

BostonB

board om wrote: »

i know that, but i assume they put it on the CV so when HR open the CV they dont see the candidate is from kazikstan and close the CV without reading it becuase they think the candidate needs sponsorship. if there is a PPS number then HR will see that they are able to work here and will at least consider the candidate.

thats the only reason i can think of for having it on the CV. i dont know any Irish people who do it, it is usualy done by foreigners.

there may be another reason i am unaware of.

They'd need a Work Permit. A PPS would be useless without it. You'd think a HR dept would know that.

board om

BostonB wrote: »

They'd need a Work Permit. A PPS would be useless without it. You'd think a HR dept would know that.

oviously HR would know they need a work permit. try reading what i said again.

i am NOT saying that a PPS number on their CV IS proof that the candidate is legally entitled to work here. i am just saying that when foreign candidates are applying for a job they MAY put their PPS number on the CV to increase their chance of getting an interview. the chances are when a HR person sees a CV from a candidate from outside the EU they will not bother taking it seriously becuase they think they will need to sponsor the candidate. by putting the PPS number on the CV the candidate is increasing their chances of being taken seriously becuse it is someway towards showing that they are able to work here. then if they get intevriewed and are offered the position they will then be asked to provide the necessary proof that they are legally allowed to work in ireland.

BostonB

board om wrote: »

oviously HR would know they need a work permit. try reading what i said again...

I did and what you said makes no sense to me. A PPS has no real value. Its just a reference number, its free. Its as easy as getting a bill mobile phone. It makes no sense to bin CV's from people with no PPS as theres nothing to stop anyone getting one. So theres no value in people stealing them either. Which is the point. having worked with PPS numbers a lot. Its quite common for people to use the wrong PPS for years.

But I take your point that in some countries the national identity number might be typically put on CV's.

Stargal

The story is on the front page of today's Irish Times:
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/frontpage/2008/0331/1206752249000.html

BostonB

I wonder now does this mean that people should make online CV's that as little personal detail as possible online. If you think about it, you can list qualifications, contact details (email, mobile), work experience, with out giving any names at all. I know its not the norm at the moment, but perhaps it should be.

Mellor

I think people are really worring too much about this.

Your CV is on that site for others to view, this is the important bit.
if there was sensitive infomation on it (there shouldn't be), and people could do something harmful like steal an identity with it, then it doesn't matter how it was got.

If somebody wanted to steal your identity with the info on your CV they would just download your CV legally, they still get the same info and they raise no flags.

Seriously, people give their CV out to strangers the whole time, and not worry about it. This was likely recruitment/spam based. If it was identity stealing, it would be a silly way to go about it.

board om

BostonB wrote: »

I did and what you said makes no sense to me. A PPS has no real value. Its just a reference number, its free. Its as easy as getting a bill mobile phone. It makes no sense to bin CV's from people with no PPS as theres nothing to stop anyone getting one. So theres no value in people stealing them either. Which is the point. having worked with PPS numbers a lot. Its quite common for people to use the wrong PPS for years.

But I take your point that in some countries the national identity number might be typically put on CV's.

read the thread again. i actuallly said that stealing a PPS number was useless and that it was no use to anyone apart from the person it was meant for. another poster was the one who said that it could be used for scams. get your facts straight.

as for a PPS number being as easy to obtain as a mobile phone number beuase it is 'free', i am not even going to waste my time on that ridiculous remark. if you think that then you obviously dont know much about it. just go and ask the 10 of thousands of foreign nationals that are trying to get one at the moment.

board om

Mellor wrote: »

I think people are really worring too much about this.

Your CV is on that site for others to view, this is the important bit.
if there was sensitive infomation on it (there shouldn't be), and people could do something harmful like steal an identity with it, then it doesn't matter how it was got.

If somebody wanted to steal your identity with the info on your CV they would just download your CV legally, they still get the same info and they raise no flags.

Seriously, people give their CV out to strangers the whole time, and not worry about it. This was likely recruitment/spam based. If it was identity stealing, it would be a silly way to go about it.

you spot on there. people hand there CVs into shops, offices, recruitment agencies, put them up on websites, etc all the time. i dont see how this is much different.

you never know, someone could end up getting a new job out of it. for starters i would say they are looking for new IT staff in jobs.ie

Sherifu

rte.ie wrote:

CVs submitted to recruitment site Jobs.ie have been downloaded by hackers who used an illegally obtained login and password to access areas of the site limited to employers.

The hacking took place last Thursday. A company spokeswoman quoted in the Irish Times says those affected have been contacted and the Data Protection Commissioner has also been informed.

The company has someone at a 24-hour helpline number taking queries. The company is urging those affected not to open suspicious e-mails.

It's starting to make the headlines.

Link.

DAnlee

I got my CV stolen as well....so I rang the help line and there were of little help!!! BUT they did tell me that 60000 CVs were stolen!!! So much for a small amount!

Xcellor

DAnlee wrote: »

I got my CV stolen as well....so I rang the help line and there were of little help!!! BUT they did tell me that 60000 CVs were stolen!!! So much for a small amount!

60,000 out of how many in total I wonder.

aidan_walsh

Xcellor wrote: »

60,000 out of how many in total I wonder.

Indeed. As I said earlier, "a small number" is always relative.

AARRRGH

At the bottom of Jobs.ie it says "5945676 applications delivered", so it would be fair to say they have at least one million CVs on their server.

Mellor

lol, how do you figure that.

there is no way that 1/4 of the country have used jobs.ie

first of all all the people who haven't looked for jobs in the last ten years, or ever (young people and those in steady jobs) can be taken out, probably only 1 million left.


4225 jobs from 1397 companies.

4225 jobs out of a million, i doubt it

AARRRGH

Well, if they've sent 5,945,676 job applications since they started, they've got to have a lot of CVs on their server, right?

board om

but your forgeting the people who apply for loads of jobs at a time. some people might apply for 10+ customer service roles or sales roles at a time. and they might do this once a week. i would say 100,000 would be a more realistic number.

AARRRGH

100,000 seems a bit on the low side. That's 50 job applications per CV.

I run a small jobsite and I would have around 100,000 CVs, so I dunno, I reckon they have a lot more than that.

The Irish Times article was interesting. The hacker can now associate the e-mails from the CV with the persons name, which makes phishing attacks much more accurate. I reckon people should change their e-mail address to avoid this.

lostexpectation

my cv is there (as a .txt) and i didn't get one of those emails, its listed as not searchable by empoyers, is that why i didn't get a mail?

foxtrot is asking about having attached a cv to send for a particular job application rather then having put your cv on a the site for employers to view, is there a difference, is that the difference in those who got a warning email about there cv being downloaded?

( i presume that jobs.ie can view my cv, but not give access to it to anybody but the one time i applied to the specific company?)

AARRRGH

It's hard to say, as we're all guessing as to what happened.

If the hacker gained access to their server, they could get all CVs, whether or not they were listed as searchable by other employers.

If the hacker only gained access to the website (I don't believe this is the case) it's possible he could only access certain CVs.

If you're worried, change your e-mail address to reduce the risk of an accurate phishing attack. If you're really worried, ask for a copy of your credit rating from the Irish Credit Bureau in a couple of months to make sure no one has used your details to take out a loan or something like that.

You could give Jobs.ie a ring and ask them?

lostexpectation

changing email to reduce the risk of accurate phishing attack? not falling for the phishing attack would be easier.

well if they havn't emailed me im not too worried.

i wonder if i put my cv up years before with an email account i no longer use nor exists. they won't be able to contact people to warn about others having info on them if that's the case.

AARRRGH

Yep, that could be the case. Or if you use something like Hotmail or Gmail their e-mail could be in your spam folder.

justmehere

They have you name, address, phone number, your work history. Priceless.

3 out of those 4 can be got from a phone book :rolleyes:

I got the email that my CV was taken as well :mad: What is really annoying me though is that I have rang them 5 times already requesting a copy of my CV - I can't never remember sending it to them so I want to know what information is there. But I keep getting fobbed off. I was also told on Sun that 47,000 CVs were downloaded...I see DAnlee was told 60,000, on Mon. Thread post #135

So what's on the typical CV? Home phone, mobile phone, date of birth, address, email, work history, and references. Everything else, while it's not pleasant details being "out in the wild", is pretty meaningless stuff that you could make up if you wanted to (people don't do that on CVs though ).

As pointed out on previous posts, you can't get anything without official proof - and coming in with a CV to your bank manager or car dealer is not going to get you a loan or a car :-) I suppose the more sophisticated could use this information in forging of "official" documents, but given so many millions of very detailed info was stolen in the UK recently, I don't think basic info on a CV is really anything to worry about or even possible - how many students used dodgy id cards?

In the worse case scenario I think it's a possible starting point to phishing for more info, but most people - certainly those that would use an online recruitment agency in the first place - should have enough cop-on to spot those a mile away. Dodgy phone calls would be my next concern (home/mobile phones). But unless you're dead, you know not to give out your bank details over the phone.

Can anyone else think of what could be realistically done with CV data? Could they ring up a bank claiming to be you - they have your name, address, and DOB and ask for say a change of address on your account? Would banks hand over money if someone came into the bank personally, claiming to have forgotten their ATM card, but coudl still give your details to the teller (name/address/DOB)?

Any article I've read about this situation with jobs.ie said be careful of mainly phishing; very little about what could be done with the information alone as it stands on the CV, which I suspect is negligible?

So in summary of my own view, obviously not happy that it happened, but not overly concerned to negative consequences so long as I stay awake when someone asks for bank/cc details over the phone . Two minds about whether to go to the gardai or not, just to report it? Also not happy at jobs.ie reluctance/delay in sending out my CV - perhaps it's the volume of calls they're dealing with, so I will keep you updated. Have asked them to remove it from their system permanently also.

BostonB

board om wrote: »

read the thread again. i actuallly said that stealing a PPS number was useless and that it was no use to anyone apart from the person it was meant for. another poster was the one who said that it could be used for scams. get your facts straight.

I was talking about having value in terms of getting employment not value as in stealing money/identity. Hence why I quoted you.

board om wrote: »

as for a PPS number being as easy to obtain as a mobile phone number beuase it is 'free', i am not even going to waste my time on that ridiculous remark. if you think that then you obviously dont know much about it. just go and ask the 10 of thousands of foreign nationals that are trying to get one at the moment.

You either entitled to get one or your not. If you are entitled, then its free, its just a reference number for getting public services. Having a PPS is not proof of having a valid visa or work permit. So putting it on your CV doesn't mean you're ok to work.

JavaBear

Didn't even know my CV was on it. Maybe I'll get a job now.

board om

BostonB wrote: »

So putting it on your CV doesn't mean you're ok to work.

i never said it did. you really should READ the posts fully and not just glance over them. is english your first language?

BostonB

board om wrote: »

i never said it did. you really should READ the posts fully and not just glance over them. is english your first language?

Maybe I'm one of them "foreigners"

What did this mean then?

BostonB wrote: »

Why would you have your PPS on your CV?

board om wrote: »

some foreigners do it. i think it is to show that they are legal to work in ireland when applying for the position.