The drop zone at Kings Dominion provides about one second of "Oh my god" and two of blissful free fall - well, almost. In any case, it's fun as hell. Make sure you try it out if you visit.

New Scam Warning - Identity Theft through Employment Offer?

I received an email today concerning an offer of employment from 'Charles A. Davlin' of NESMA.COM. Fortunately for me, the job offer I received was for much less than I normally am offered for employment, which raised alarms. Additionally, the following was in the email message:

This position requires a DISCO security awareness/clearance. You will be
required to provide the following information to start your application for
a clearance, after the RSNF has accepted you for employment.

Name, Social Security Number, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Current
Employer and Address, Copy of latest security update if available.

While some or all of this information may indeed be necessary to process a security clearance, it is not normally something pointed out to folks who are being offered a job. The fact that the email asks for this up front is alarming.

The scammers are doing a nice job, though. The email is accompanied by personalized and boiler-plate employment offer documents in Word format, position descriptions that are oddly personalized, and Insurance Plan details. Automation of Word document creation is not something I'd seen before from scam artists/bulk emailers, but this is certainly a new extent that someone would be willing to go to.

Identity theft is not a new crime, but these are some new lengths, certainly. Be careful out there...these folks seem to have pulled my resume off Monster.Com. While the email and offer look real, and they look willing to exchange paperwork, signatures, etc, if it smells like a scam, it usually is....