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What Is The Risk Of Identity Theft When Changing Job?Your author has recently spotted an area in the UK which is now at massive risk of identity theft problems. This area relates to changes in the law as it applies to recruitment consultants. As much as it pains me to write this, the web building you see before your eyes does not pay the bills of this particular webmaster. In the future perhaps, but not right now. This means that there is a day job too... Recent changes at my employer and a general dulling of the work - as happens anywhere over time - prompted me to contact a recruitment consultant and look into alternatives. It was whilst moving through their various processes that the changes they have undergone and the potential risk of identity theft became clear to me. The UK government has now put in place rules which require employers and recruitment consultants to ensure that their staff are not illegal immigrants. The most obvious way to do this is to insist that the potential recruit shows proof of identification. This would usually be carried out by providing passport details. To prove that they have done this, the recruiter keeps a photocopy of the passport on file. So far, so good. The problem is that by doing this, most of our sensitive information is held in one place. Just think of the details that a recruiter has on a cv: full name, address, date of birth, telephone number, email address, current and previous employers, bank details, education history and more. Combine this with a photocopy of a passport and the files of a recruitment consultant become a goldmine. Many recruitment firms are small companies that contain just a few key members of staff - usually just the partners and a couple of admin staff. Are there standards for employing admin staff in tiny companies? Who might have access to these files and all this personal information for literally hundreds of people? It is worth pointing out that such small firms do not like these changes and complain about them to whoever will listen... If an identity thief were to join forces with someone who is able to carry out occassional credit checks, there would be nothing safe! When adding in the details from a credit check - bank, mortgage, loan and credit card information - an identity thief could wreak havoc in very little time. As an aside to this subject, in early 2008 your author spotted what appeared to be the perfect job online. An online application was made for this position which was in a different part of the UK. After a first interview, documentation (copy passport) was requested as discussed above. To make this easier, your author dropped into the local office of this national recruitment chain - reed.co.uk - so that copies could be arranged. Whilst chatting with the office representative, it slipped out that all employees have access to all cvs and applications across the country! The consultants work so hard that they never have time to look - but potentially, they could obtain full details of almost anyone they wanted. How frightening is that?? It goes without saying that we should all exercise extreme caution when dealing with these firms.
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