Looking for work ?

If you’re like me and looking for work, beware the shady agencies. We all know that most of the “jobs” they advertise are just filler and they really just want you on their books to make themselves look better.
Anyway, my point is, I found an advert on the job centre website for class 1 work and decided to phone up. The guy who answered made some excuses and asked me to fill in the forms on their website.
So I went to the site and was going to fill in the forms until I noticed that they are not using a secure page to receive the details. By which I mean, there is no padlock on the browser, and the address bar doesn’t turn yellow/green. Of course, this means that anybody with a mind to can “overhear” all your details as they pass along the wires. When you consider that this firm wants your national insurance number, all your personal details and bank account details, this is a bit irresponsible. And to make things worse, on the page where you go to start the form, it says all your details are protected by 128 bit SSL. They aren’t - I’ve checked thoroughly and even filled in fake details all the way through to see if it sends to a secure address.
So be warned. It may not seem much to worry about, but when you do get caught out it can cost you thousands. Identity theft is easy money for criminals, so don’t make it easy for them.
The site can be found here. I sent them an email to complain but no reply. They make a big fuss about how honest they are with their drivers, but this shows them up to not be trusted, in my opinion. If I were a more suspicious person, I might say that the whole site was set up just to get your personal details, but I can’t be sure on that. I am sure that it is not secure as it is.

By the way, the amount of money they are saving by NOT having the padlock show up …
£15 per year.
Some big time firm that is.
You can even create free certificates that do exactly the same thing as the paid for ones, but they make the user accept them first.
So remember, if the address doesn’t start with https then the site is NOT secure.

Hope this helps someone.

(BTW, I’ve been working with web sites and web servers since 1997, and using them since 1995 so I do have a clue)
The WWW was first thought of in 1989, and didn’t actually exist until 1990. The first browser appeared in 1991 and displayed only text - no mouse, no images. A proper browser wasn’t available to the ordinary public until 1993 when there were less than 200 servers in the whole world. There are now over 231,510,169 web sites online.
If you’re interested have a look at some of these links :
news.netcraft.com/archives/web_s … urvey.html
chrisharrison.net/projects/InternetMap/
opte.org/maps/
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/503611.stm
kwintessential.co.uk/map/int … ation.html
cheswick.com/ches/map/gallery/index.html

So the next time your internet is slow, you’ll understand :wink:

I recommend that you do not give financial details over the web. In the preliminary stages of recruitment they dont need this info.Only give your details after you have the job in the bag.Hope this helps someone.