* The December 12 consumer report relating to what became the UMAB scam may be found at and
* FTC Help Line: Call this number to file a complaint about fraudulent jobs. (877) 382-4357.

Thank you to all of the job seekers who have contacted the WPF and shared their experiences with us. Without the UMAB victims’ information, researchers would have had much greater difficulty piecing together the puzzle this scam presented.

The World Privacy Forum began study of online job scams in February2003.

1. Researchers did a background material search for information and collected and read background material on how job scams operated from sources such as newspapers, online news sites, law reviews, consumer protection agencies, the BBB, the FTC, and the U.S. Postal Inspector General.
2. A search for open fraud cases was conducted nationwide.
3. Twenty job sites that varied in size and focus were selected as a first study group.

The timeline has many examples of what the job ad looked like. Below are step by step examples from UMAB scam victims of how they were led through the process of this scam after responding to one of the fake ads.

Internet privacy — The World Privacy Forum, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and EPIC were joined by California-based EFF, the ACLU of Northern California, Consumer Action, Consumer Federation of California and other national groups in asking Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt to provide a prominent link to the Google privacy policy directly from its home page. Google has recently been criticized for not providing a link to its privacy policy from its home page, as the California Online Privacy Protection Act requires. The groups noted that linking to a privacy policy on a home page is considered a widespread best practice.