Learn to keep your CV safe online (From Harrow Times)

Learn to keep your CV safe online

2:42pm Thursday 17th September 2009 in

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Many job hunters choose to put their CV online because of the ease of gaining widespread exposure to recruiters and employers.

But many do not realise that this process can also put their confidential data in front of people who will quickly steal and profit from it. A new, free training guide aims to make job hunters aware of the risks and ways to minimise them.

Why Criminals Love Your CV explains in simple steps what ID theft is, why job hunters are particularly vulnerable and the ten steps they should take to protect themselves.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos (January 09) it was reported that online theft costs over $1 trillion a year and is rising sharply. The advice issued was that ‘too many people do not know how to protect themselves’.

Several different reports have identified ID fraud as the UK’s fastest growing crime, and at the latest estimate it costs the UK economy £1.2 billion per year (Identity Fraud Steering Committee figures, 2008).

In January 2009, hackers stole 4.5 million job hunters’ details from the jobsite monster.co.uk ( the largest single theft known about in the UK).

Furthermore, in an experiment last autumn by the Metropolitan Police and The Information Assurancy Council, 93 per cent of CVs were found to contain enough information for an identity theft to occur.

The key contents of Why Criminals Love Your CV are: What is ID theft?, How does ID theft affect you?, Why job hunters are especially vulnerable, Ten step ID theft prevention plan, and an ID theft resources sheet.

The guide was written by Andy Gooday, the founder of MyBrandAcademy.com; a company that teaches job hunters how to maximise the effectiveness of their job search. To ensure Why Criminals Love Your CV and its recommendations were right up to date he engaged cyber crime expert Phil Butler.

Mr Butler is a retired police inspector, member of the United Nations Expert Group on fraud, advisor to HM Government’s Strategic Fraud Authority, a director of Newcastle University cybercrime research centre and a financial crime consultant.

To download the guide free of charge visit www.mybrandacademy.com