CV blatantly copied and sent to agencies

Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:

C) Keep it, but only in PDF format and electronically signed with the option that it will remain locked. This way, no part of its contents will be editable. I think the signature cannot be removed. You can add the signature with Adobe Acrobat as well, although there might be other options out there.

Thomas T. Frost wrote:

The CV was invented before the Internet, and while the purpose of a CV is to make the information available to those who need it, it was never to make it freely available to the entire planet.

Mine is available on request. The more personal information you put online, the higher the risk of abuse. My profile contains a brief summary but it's not so concrete that it's worth copying.

You have marked your CV as "Confidential". And then you've made it publically available. That's incoherent to me. If I were a mean recruiter, I might ask if you were going to publish their clients' confidential documents too.

Katarzyna Slowikova wrote:



I have removed my CVs some time ago, out of the fear of them being stolen (only to find an old copy on a Proz cdn server - but this is another story...).

I have however thought about another solution, sort of alternative to Tomas's C) point for IT lame (and lazy) translators: print your CV, scan it and make this copy available for download. The less then perfect quality of the scan would be preferable.

The idea is to make your CV not impossible, but at least difficult to use for the scammers (I think I got this idea from the translators-scammers website - be sure to report your scammer there!). There's still enough CVs out there which they can steal effortlessly so why would they bother with OCR-ing your copy, editing it and all that work.

I haven't used this trick, since I got used to not having any CVs online. And imho it's really unnecessary, you can put all your info in you profile (which again would require some work by the scammer to copy and format into a CV-like document).

Good luck, whatever you chose to do!

[Edited at 2016-04-08 11:57 GMT]

James Hodges wrote:

Scamming with your CV is identity theft by another name. Remove the details and only hand them over upon request. If legitimate agencies are interested in knowing more about you, they will initiate contact. Furthermore, once you have removed your resume, you might go back over your profile and polish it up a bit to make visitors to your profile page even more interested in what you have to offer.

Finally, as somebody above suggested, if the scam artists in question are in your own country (Australia) go after them and seek a prosecution to the full extent of the law.

Thayenga wrote:

Make your business brochure (CV) available only on request. This is what I'm doing. This way only outsourcers, that is people who have your permission, get to see it, and no frauster can copy and use it.

Report the offender. Perhaps the agency that informed you can help you track down the frauster's location through his/her IP address.

You might try to print out the document, then scan it in jpeg format. This way nobody can do anything with it, unless it's a nerd surfing the deep web.

[Edited at 2016-04-07 22:59 GMT]

Daryo wrote:

you have some chances of getting the Australian legal system involved - don't know the fine details, but if they "appropriated" your membership to various organisations, that should be a pretty obvious attempt at fraud; if they are not from Australia, it's probably too much trouble.

OTOH, if you post your CV, in whatever format , it doesn't take a computer genius to turn a "locked/signed /.. whatever PDF" into an editable format - whoever says otherwise is daydreaming/indulging in a false sense of security.

"available on demand" is the least bad solution, in my opinion.

Teresa Borges wrote:

http://www.translator-scammers.com/

Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:

I see three options here:

A) Remove it. Agencies are used to requesting your CV if they are really interested in you. This has been mi option.

B) Keep it, but only in PDF format and password-protected, so that it is read-only and non-printable (you can do this with Adobe Acrobat; if you do not have Acrobat, feel free to ask for help). This option, however, is not very safe as there are password removers out there that will remove your password in a second.

C) Keep it, but only in PDF format and electronically signed with the option that it will remain locked. This way, no part of its contents will be editable. I think the signature cannot be removed. You can add the signature with Adobe Acrobat as well, although there might be other options out there.

Good luck, and keep safe!