Tuesday, April 03, 2007

TimesJobs and other Monstrosities

Lately my wife has been getting mail from TimesJobs and Monster India, based on her profile on those sites. The trouble is, she never placed those profiles there.

The first question was, are these really from TimesJobs and Monster? The first thing one does to find out is to check the headers. Unfortunately these mails were to her hotmail account (and fortunately she doesn't use that account much any more). And there seems to be no way to see the email headers in hotmail. Nor are the headers preserved if you forward the mails somewhere else. Thanks so much, Microsoft. No doubt this stems from your well-known concern for the naive user who may get confused by such options. It's the same touching solicitude that you exhibited when you decided to hide filename extensions in Windows, thus allowing viruses to name themselves britney.jpg.exe and appear to be harmless pictures. Or allowed ActiveX to install spyware without confusing the user with confirmation dialogues, so that, by some reports, 89 percent of the world's PCs are infested with spyware. But I digress.

So that failed. Next question, if these mails really are from TimesJobs and Monster, why was there no verification mail? If I register for any service whatever on the net, I thought it's standard practice that I should receive a mail asking me for confirmation ("click this link to confirm" or "type this keyword into this webpage to confirm"). That way, someone cannot create a fraudulent account in my name, without my co-operation. Surely two leading Indian jobs sites (one of which is a branch of a multinational) would take that elementary precaution?

They don't.

I created two bogus accounts, with fictitious names and an actual email address (one that I reserve for spam), one on each site. And there was no confirmatory mail. Both TimesJobs and Monster promptly sent me acknowledgements promising me that I would soon start getting spammed mercilessly by them. And I can't find a "delete account" or "delete profile" button on either site. The profiles are apparently there forever.

There must be a lawsuit lurking in this somewhere, biding its time.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi i too got an acount created in my name in timesjobs withiout my know. now i want to know how i can delete it? pls help. i don't see any option on this websitn to delete an existing account.

Rahul Siddharthan said...

As far as I know, you can't delete it. If you are sufficiently upset about it, you could consider legal action.

Unknown said...

i need delete my account in timesjobs.com how i should do

Srujana said...

hi.. even i faced this issue, to atleast get rid of mails, i removed resume and deactivated job alerts.

Rakesh said...

timesjob is totaly rubish job portal! I have created naukri.com and timesjob.com, in the year 2006. from naukri.com, I got 429 profile visitor so far, whereas timesjob saying only 25 visitor! I marked timesjob.com as a spam, so that i don't have to see their any kind of communication!

Shiva said...

click spam button....that will solve the issue for ever.

Shiva said...

click spam button....that will solve the issue for ever.

Anonymous said...

Actually, there is a way to view 'headers' in Hotmail. When you are in your inbox, right click on a particular message whose 'headers' you wish to view and select 'view message source'. That should do it.

Unknown said...

click on unsubscribe link at bottom of the jaob alert what u have got from Times jobs.
Then on right pan you can see privacy settings, then click on Activate Hibernate mode and choose an option from the list and save the settings.

Aarthi said...

I know this is an old thread, but can you believe it, Indian consumers are so naive or too busy to do anything about it. I tried so hard to get my profiles deleted. this is the reply I got from Naukri.com

Why the hell should I mail them all these details... when my concern is that they misuse them! How can I trust them with these details when they don't give me the option to delete my account.

Dear User,

If you still like to delete your account then kindly provide us the following for verification, which is mandatory to delete your account from backend.
1. Mail us from the same Email id you have mentioned in your Naukri profile.
2. Mention Username of your Naukri account which you want us to delete.
3. Mention your updated mobile number and the mobile/landline number mentioned in your Naukri, if required we will call you for verification.
4. Mention your D.O.B as mentioned in your Naukri profile.
5. Your Active Profile name of Naukri account.
6. Last “Job Apply Date”, this can be found under “Job Application History” section.

Once the entire above are verified, we will delete your account on your behalf.

For any further information or concerns, feel free to contact us.

Thanks & Regards
Naukri Technical Support Team

Prakhar said...

The retards at timesjobs.com actually sell information to 3rd party spammers. Checkout my blog post here http://prakhargoel.com/2012/10/timesjobs-com-sell-your-email-address-and-phone-numbers-to-spammers/

Anonymous said...

Dear Prakhar,

I have gone through your blog and the revelations are shocking. I am spreading the word and hope this helps raise awareness amongst users about data-mining and others corrupt-industry-wide-malpractices that these companies employ.

Thanks for the update.

Regards.

Sunil Krishnamurthy said...

Hey These are some very useful links. I also found some relevant links at Gigajob. If you want take
time to check out latest jobs in india here. Hope it helps.

daily updates said...

Nice Post keep updating like this,


Mysql Tutorials
.Net tutorials
Sql server tutorials