Mumbai, Aug 17: Twenty-two year old Naresh Kothari (name changed) narrowly missed the trap laid by hackers, who tried get some money out of him by offering him a hoax job.
Working in a mid sized IT firm, Kothari wanted to change his job and poster his resume on popular job sites like Naukri, Monster and Jobsahead. Suddenly he got an email from IT services major HCL Technologies stating that an 'offer letter' was being dispatched and he was being sent an air ticket to report in the Noida branch on Aug 24 along with with some documents. But he had to deposit a cheque worth Rs 5,250 as refundable security in a particular bank by Aug 12.All he had to do was to deposit a cheque of Rs 5,250 as refundable security in a particular bank by Aug 12. However, one of Kothari's friend working in HCL soon found that the mail was false. Ravi Shankar B, senior VP & HR Head, HCL (India), acknowledges that 'such fraudulent mails cheat innocent job aspirants, misleading them into giving money with the promise of providing jobs... '. He added that such incidents also risk the company's image and HCL was working with the police to prevent such happenings.
Kothari is not the only one. Similar incidents have occurred when earlier this year job seekers received mails from Wipro Technologies, India's third largest IT firm.
With the rising unemployment more and more people are opting for job search sites, work-at home schemes and so on thus many a time falling prey to the hackers. Shantanu Ghosh, VP, India Product Operations, Symantec informed that the open nature of web technology makes it easier for the hackers to fake web pages and users should be cautious of the discrepancies in the page by following using check methods like ensuring if there is an 's' after the 'http' in the URL.
Nitin Jyoti, manager, McAfee Avert Labs advised authenticity of the mail should be checked by replying or contacting the company. News |
