What is New in the Job Social Networks?
Over at Truston, Identity Theft Blog, there is a discussion about the fake cheque cashing business opportunity scam, which emphasizes the role that the social networks for job seekers are not doing in preventing this scam:
"The job boards are utterly useless in stopping this fraud. They are in the business of accepting ads, not taking them down. They do very little to stop it although they may talk a good story. I was contacted by CareerBuilder a while back and they promised they were diligent in fighting fraud. I took them at their word, reported some abuse and waited. I didn't see any let up in scam job postings on their site. Their standard line is that people should report fraud and then they will shut it down. By now they should realize that job seekers don't realize it is fraud until it is too late, and by then the fraudsters have re-posted using a different name and tactic. With two interns, they could cut bogus job postings significantly. Scan all their ads for certain keywords, monitoring new job posting companies and flag accounts that use foreign addresses of any kind. And put a link on every ad that lets visitors flag a posting as suspect. That won't catch them all but it's a start". (my emphasis)
In the fraud reporting social network, there are two websites tracking some of these fake cheque cashing business opportunity frauds: www.webnetpresence.com and www.peopleschronicle.org. I had previously argued that the new Federal Trade Commission business opportunity rule would not make a difference as the commercial job social networkers would not incur any liability.
But that is probably not the correct conclusion. The FTC regulates misleading advertising pursuant to section 5 and section 12, for the purchase of food, drugs, devices or cosmetics, of the FTC Act. If the FTC has recognized that it is misleading and deceptive for the network marketing industry to advertise their business opportunities as jobs, then it should be a violation of section 5 of the FTC Act for www.careerbuilder.com, www.monster.com and the other job social networks to mislead their consumers by advertising jobs which are clearly frauds. Yet another reason why there should be a private cause of action for section 5 violations of the FTC Act, because I don't see the FTC having the resources to go after the job boards.
Technorati Tags: job postings, job seekers, job boards, report fraud, careerbuilder, business opportunity scam, cheque cashing, ads, identity theft, social networks, diligent, interns, tactic, bogus
