Red Condor: Latest Email Scams Targeting People Looking for Employment

Company Warns of Growing Number of "Need a Job" Phishing Scams; Emails Appear to Come From Reputable Companies and From Real Job Sites Like CareerBuilder or Monster.com


ROHNERT PARK, CA--(Marketwire - August 4, 2009) - The latest email scams are now targeting job seekers. Red Condor, an award-winning provider of true hybrid email security solutions, today issued a warning to email users about the latest email security scams that are preying on people looking for employment. Among the scams are emails that claim to be offering employment from familiar, reputable companies such as Pepsi and Starbucks, or masquerade as messages from real job sites like CareerBuilder or Monster.com. The fake employment offers frequently involve "payment processing" requests, which give scammers an excuse to ask for a respondent's bank account information. The phishing scams were detected with Red Condor's BotHunter and Spam Trip Wire technologies, which are two layers of the company's multi-layer defense strategy.

In addition to direct email spam, other scammers are using craigslist to post fake job ads. When people respond to the ads, they receive an email reply that requires them to go to a "credit check" web site to get their credit scores. The credit check link contains the scammer's affiliate, so when victims pay for the credit check, the scammer gets a commission. An email response to "Legal Secretary job posting" on craigslist email stated, "Do not send me your info or report, I just want to make sure your score is above the 400 mark so check it and give me your exact score when you e-mail me your resume and references."

"Unfortunately, as with all phishing attacks, there is no legitimate employment offer coming, and victims have either given their personal information or money to unknown, deceitful sources," said Dr. Tom Steding, chief executive officer of Red Condor. "Spammers are once again demonstrating that nothing is off limits as they focus their efforts on the millions of people that are unemployed and looking for work. Organizations need to ensure that they have adequate email security and filtering technology to stop these types of emails before they breach their companies' networks."

Red Condor's BotHunter system searches for potential bot activity across the Web. BotHunter runs an extensive series of tests on each suspected IP address, double checking against BeigeList™, a list of known good senders, to minimize False Positives. If the IP address passes all tests, it is added to Red Condor's own Real Time Bot List. Spam Trip Wire identifies spam and virus campaigns before they penetrate users' networks. Suspicious campaigns are put on probation until a filter rule can be written to capture messages from the campaign. During the probationary period, messages from the suspicious campaign are quarantined. Red Condor charts the number of phishing campaigns by Spam Trip Wire and bots detected by BotHunter in its online Threat Center at RedCondor.com.

About Red Condor

Red Condor is revolutionizing spam fighting with its next generation technology. Red Condor's highly accurate email filter, hybrid architecture Vx Technology™, and fully managed appliances lead to a dramatic reduction in the cost of owning a premium spam filter. With solutions for small business, as well as ISPs with millions of email inboxes, Red Condor has a cost-effective, timesaving solution that is rapidly gaining market share. The system's design has built-in zero tolerance for lost email, and a near zero false positive rate while achieving long-term spam block rates greater than 99%. This next-generation technology is backed by a 24x7 customer care center staffed by email security experts at Red Condor's headquarters. For more information, visit www.redcondor.com.

Contact Information: Contact: Kevin Wilson 513-898-1008

Need a Job Phishing Scam Email Example