These data security issues seem to be more a cash-in of customer trust than an actual incident. They get a list of a million active names, addresses, work history, salary information, phone numbers… they sell it to the highest bidder, download it and when the phishing starts, Monster claims SECURITY BREACH!!!!

Ya I believe it……

http://www.usajobs.gov/securityNotice.asp

No mention of Recruiters sending Resumes w/o permission from the Candidates to jobs that may not exist, and compromising their own efforts? No mention of Selling Data on Programs without permission from that individual?

Ah, sorry, I guess, another Rant and Rage about this VERY topic from Karen Mattonen.. It is amazing what will stir the hornets nest, but it is my personal opinion that there is not much difference to what Some Recruiters may and will do Intentionally – compared to the breach of Monster’s database.

Karen Mattonen..

I represent the International Brotherhood of Trumpasaurai (of which there are one, frequently seen at trade shows.)

I am extremely displeased with you all. You have not lain down and accepted the word of my master (monster.com) as golden.

How dare you.

Let me set the record straight, right here, right now.

1. It is not *our* fault that we lost all of those candidate records to bad people who want to steal nice human identities. It’s yours. You dumb clients better stop messing up our nice resume database by catching viruses.

2. If my master says that he has no direct knowledge that a virus even exists, and that identity theft exists, you will listen to our repudiation of objective reality. You will accept monster-reality.

3. Even if viruses do exist, they only downloaded information found in a phone book. That is why we charge so much money for access to the resume database. It takes many phone books to store this information. You should see master’s closet. It’s just shoes and phone books.

4. I had a dream last night that master couldn’t tell the difference between a human downloading a resume vs. a machine (like the Monster Partner program). That would mean that all of those nice humans that designed the Monster partner program and gave it to ATSes exposed a gaping flaw in their security. Then I woke up though and forgot all about that.

4. I expect two things from my master’s clients:

* Pay your invoices like good humans and don’t complain about increased rates.

* Stop questionining master. You are too simple to question the mind of his greatness.

If you would like to respond to me via human mail, I can be found at:

Office of the Trumpasaurus
Monster.com
Maynard, MA 54678
ATTN: Garbage Pile

Sincerely,

The Trumpasaurus

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136154-pg,1/article.html

and here:

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2007/08/20/symantec-monster-research-tech-cx_0820darkreading.html

This compounded with the fact that their alliances program apparently further extends this lack of security to third parties (see here):

http://info.monster.com/alliances/hrvendor.asp

with no basic checks and balances is just lazy and poor management of private information. And don’t try and tell me that resume information isn’t “private”… I’m assured multiple times throughout the account creation process that my information is both private and secure.

What’s worse is that their “security model” seems to cross all their offerings including those that provide companies with their own career web sites, so are those using Monster.com for that compromised or at least at risk? I know that our company let’s those with Monster.com profiles “push” those into our systems and that Monster requires that you have an account on Monster before you can easily get to our jobs.

All I can say is no thanks… Lot’s of sites can drive candidate traffic and at least some of them seem to care about the fact that they sit between my jobs and my potential future employees’ privacy.