Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 2:08pm Sunday 25 April 2010
Symantec has put together a short educational video on how cyber mule jobs work and why you need to avoid these types of job ads. Job boards work very hard to put in processes to validate each advertiser and the legitimacy of the job ads before they are posted on their site. But scammers are getting smarter and we all need to learn how to spot suspect job ads.
In this day and age we’re all aware of the threat cybercriminals pose to our personal information. If you’re not careful, items such as your credit card number could fall into the wrong hands, resulting in unauthorized goods and services being purchased in your name. What may come as a surprise is not everyone participating in these activities is a full-blown cybercriminal. Some are ordinary citizens - just like you and me - that unintentionally get caught up in illegal activity.
How does this happen? Let’s say you’ve recently lost your job and are desperate to find new work. So, you post your resume on a job recruitment website. A short time later you receive an email from a recruiter:
Acme Inc. is opening a vacancy for the Correspondence Manager position.
What luck! The job is done entirely from home, receiving and reshipping packages. It’s easy work that pays quite well:
Base Payment Mail handling managers receive $1000 salary per month and additionally $25 for every shipped package during the trial period.
It sounds too good to be true, right? Well, it is. The job, should you accept it, actually entails redistributing goods purchased online with stolen credit cards. Congratulations, you’re a cyber mule.