Whatever's tugging at my brain handles
Posted in Job Hunting on Jul 15th, 2008
Just got this one. It's not as obvious that it's a scam because they use a lot of corporate doublespeak to talk in circles about the job itself, but it carries the big hallmarks of a scam. I'll run the text and then we can look at the big red flags.
Posted in Job Hunting on Jul 13th, 2008
My father sent me a link to a California Bar Journal article about check scams targeting lawyers.
Unlike the ones targeting average folks, these have been for 6 figure amounts and use wire transfers rather than Western Union, but the premise is the same. The scammer contacts a lawyer, saying they need a representative in [...]
Posted in Job Hunting, Miscellaneous Thoughts on Jul 11th, 2008
This one slipped through Yahoo's spam filters. I'll run the text and then we can discuss why it's bogus...
Subject: Book-keeper Wanted
From: "Michael Chalon"
Dear Sir/Madam,
Would you like to work online from home and get paid weekly ? Chalon- HandMade needs a book-keeper in the state, so I want to know if you will like to [...]
Posted in Job Hunting on Jul 10th, 2008
Just got the following slipping through my spam filters. I'll post the text and then we'll look at the big red flags that show it's a scam.
From: kippar chinpan >2vivarais.transactions@century21france.fr<
Subject: Admininstrative Officer Required - 1500/week
We are a Germany company, we are doing business all over the Europe, our main activities are real estate investments [...]
Posted in Job Hunting on Jul 2nd, 2008
Looks like the check fraudsters ran out of dupes and are trying to recruit a fresh batch of new ones. Just got the following e-mail...
RECEIVED-FROM: [78.169.10.42] (helo=yuksel5) by XXXXXXXX with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1KE5xK-0002Wt-6Z; Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:17:23 -0700
FROM: qknrw@bluecoilspring.com
SUBJECT: RE: your resume
We have considered your resume and we are glad to offer [...]
Posted in Job Hunting on Jul 2nd, 2008
Just got this one slipping through Yahoo's spam filters. If you're not familiar with this scam, they send you checks and money orders from their "clients" which they need you to cash. You take them to the bank, cash them, and keep 10% for yourself, sending the rest to them by Western Union.
Then [...]
Posted in Job Hunting on May 9th, 2008
Just got a new job scam. They're very vague and don't give any details, but they're showing big red flags and you just should not reply to find out more. Here's the text:
Subject: Representative Needed
From: "The Case Company (UK) Ltd" <info@case.co.uk>
To: undisclosed-recipients
We are one of the fastest growing company here in UK.Due to [...]
Posted in Job Hunting on Apr 29th, 2008
The angle on this one is different than ones I've seen before. They want to pay you for proofreading services. And the rates they're offering are actually a little lower than a random check of per-word pricing from a couple of random proofreading services I looked up. But there's our first big flag. [...]
Posted in Job Hunting, Just Personal on Apr 28th, 2008
So I've got a new "keep my sanity while I wait to hear if I got the job" song that's calming me down better than "Don't Stop Believin'" And not only that, I found I can embed a sample of it it in my blog courtesy of imeem. If you click the song [...]
Posted in Job Hunting, Just Personal on Apr 28th, 2008
I had an interview for a perm job (as opposed to the contracting I'm doing now) about a week and a half ago. The hiring manager wanted to meet with a lot of candidates, so they just finished the interviews late last week and a decision is going to come down most likely today.
It's [...]
Posted in Job Hunting on Apr 26th, 2008
Just got a job scam, though I'm a bit stumped as to what the catch is. According to this, they send you packages that you then forward on. They pay your mailing costs and $50 on top of it for the service... per package. I'm figuring there's something illegal in the packages [...]
Posted in Job Hunting on Apr 23rd, 2008
Just got the following job offer for a "Financial Representative" position. Of course, it's a check cashing scam.
For those of you who haven't heard about the check cashing job scams going around the internet, they work like this: A company pretends to hire you as a "financial representative" to cash checks [...]
Posted in Job Hunting on Apr 21st, 2008
I got the following e-mail with the subject: "Your Opportunity"
From: Cassandra Hayden <ssb@bluemedium.com>
Subject: Your opportunity
My name is Tim Kay. I am manager of Professional Escrow Company,
http://www.professionalescrow.org
Responsible employees are seeked for a part-time position. No experience is required. Our company will sign an agreement with you and you will be trained by us for free. [...]
Posted in Job Hunting on Apr 21st, 2008
This scam just got through my own Spam Assasin filters and then through the filters at Gmail when I checked a personal account remotely. For those of you not familiar with the check cashing job scams going around the internet, they work like this: A company pretends to hire you as a financial agent, [...]
Posted in Job Hunting on Apr 18th, 2008
This latest one got through the spam filters less than an hour ago with the subject "New job opportunity with All Money Group" from Isabelle Short (terry@asetquality.com).
Here's a red flag... How many people's e-mail address has someone else's first name?
Another big red flag, the sender is at one domain but the contact you [...]
Posted in Job Hunting on Apr 16th, 2008
Just got this and I thought I'd share. For those of you not familiar with the scam... they send you checks to cash. You take a commission and send the rest of the money where directed, usually to some other country by Western Union. Problem is the checks are fake. Quite [...]
Posted in Job Hunting on Apr 9th, 2008
Picked up another check cashing scheme job scam that slipped through Yahoo's spam filters.
Basically, for those of you new to this, the scam is that criminals in other countries tell Americans, and now apparently Canadians and Australians too, they have a legitimate company that needs reps to receive payments for them in your country. [...]
Posted in Job Hunting, Techno Thoughts on Mar 13th, 2008
So I only post the scams that get through the SpamAssassin on my personal e-mail account or through the spam filters at Gmail or Yahoo mail. This one just got through SpamAssassin. These jerks don't even bother to go to the trouble of inventing a fake company name or backstory, setting up a [...]
Posted in Job Hunting on Mar 13th, 2008
So, I got another job scam from a company calling itself Guardian Consulting. It's remarkable how much effort they put into this, even sending a multi-page "contract" attached with the e-mail, yet let little things show through that show this is a scam. Here's the e-mail:
Hello, you have received this message because you [...]
Posted in Job Hunting, Technology & Life on Mar 7th, 2008
So I just got another check cashing scam. The subject was "Make $225 And More Every Day" and instead of text, they used a graphic. Inside the e-mail, they repeated the "Make $225 And More Every Day" plus a link to their scam site at fallseagull.com. A check into the registration on [...]
Posted in Success, Technology & Life on Mar 7th, 2008
Just got yet another notification that I won a lottery I did not enter. How many lotteries can I win in a day?
CONFIRMATION OF YOUR EMAIL REF NUMBER
You have won USD850,000.00 in BELGISCHE LOTTERY Email Sweepstakes Progam Corporation, held on the 5th of MARCH. 2008.in Belgium.We write to officially notify you of this award [...]
Posted in Job Hunting on Mar 6th, 2008
Got another "we'll pay you a commission to cash checks for us" job scam today. If you found this page because you were looking for information about the job on Google, trying to see if it is legit... it's not. In fact, no legitimate business is offering to pay high commissions to individuals [...]
Posted in Job Hunting, Success, Techno Thoughts on Feb 29th, 2008
So I had an idea for a fun t-shirt and needed a quick illustration. I've got some offshore artists I used to generate the artwork for FunDraw.com at low per-piece rates, but since the economy's so down I decided I should post the gig to Craigslist, even if it might cost me 3-4 times [...]
Posted in Job Hunting, Society, Techno Thoughts on Feb 26th, 2008
I just got another job scam e-mail, this time offering me a sales rep position. What some of you may not know is that not all the job offer scams are intended to get you to cash fake checks or buy classes you don't need or buy supplies for a project that never materializes. [...]
Posted in Online Marketing And SEO, Success on Feb 21st, 2008
A work friend who is also an editor pointed me at a recent post by Seth Godin where he issues some platitudes on the responsibility of a communicator for failures in communication.
"What's helpful is to realize that you have a choice when you communicate. You can design your products to be easy to [...]
Posted in Miscellaneous Thoughts, Success on Sep 13th, 2007
Recently I've become addicted to Ninja Warrior (a.k.a. Sasuke).
Like many people in this country, I need to get in shape, but I find the gym incredibly boring. The exercises are repetitive and don't really feel like they link up with any useful skill. But if I could find a gym that offered a [...]
Recently, I was catching up on Aaron Dragushan's blog, Ice Cream For Everyone and read his post about kiva.org.
Kiva is a micro-lending collective where you can invest small amounts in interest free loans given to people in developing economies to help start or expand a business. They're usually just a few hundred dollars and [...]
Posted in Job Hunting, Society, Technology & Life on Apr 15th, 2007
What kind of jobs do you think would ask for applicants with a sense of humor? You might be surprised.
Though I'm not unemployed, I am underemployed. So a little while ago, I began job hunting in the Seattle area. Considering that I have seen many of my jokes float around the net, [...]
Posted in Online Marketing And SEO, Success on Mar 22nd, 2007
Today I added an AdSense-enhanced Google search to my drawing and clip art site, and within an hour of it going live I'd made 23 cents from it. Woo hoo!
Now you may say "23 cents, big fat hairy deal. What can you buy with 23 cents?" That's the wrong way to think [...]
Posted in Success, Techno Thoughts, Web Programming on Mar 7th, 2007
On the heels of my post about trying to find a coder for a small project, I find that my friend Aaron Dragushan of WonderMill (the company that brings you such cool sites as FreedBack) started his own blog, and his first post of the month is on finding a designer.
What I find interesting is [...]
Posted in Success, Web Programming on Mar 6th, 2007
So I have been developing a very cool art site on my own, based around a Flash-based drawing application. But occasionally, I've needed to subcontract small bits of code and that can be a frustrating experience.
I won't go into the technical details of the latest code block I tried to subcontract out, just the [...]
Posted in Success on Feb 7th, 2007
So, while I try to get my sites earning a "full time income", I've been on the job hunt, mostly looking for a 6-12 month contract, but open to a "perm" position. After the commercials for CareerBuilder on the Superbowl, I thought I'd post a resume there.
The first "shock" was that they try to [...]
Posted in Success on Jan 16th, 2007
I was updating my profile on Linked In and saw that someone in my network was looking for ways to ask the right questions to get to what a person needed for success.
These questions weren't for trying to determine what the generic "you" needed (i.e. a broad-based answer that would work for the great masses), [...]
Posted in Success on Dec 4th, 2006
The greatest enemy to anyone's success is "killing time." Relaxing is one thing. But when you catch yourself watching a TV program you don't even like because you've "got nothing better to do," you're killing time. And time you kill is time you can't get back. It's not just dead, you [...]