The job board operated by U.K. newspaper The Guardian was reportedly hacked this past weekend and about 500,000 resumes and other information valuable to identity theft scum walked out the door. The response from The Guardian? Pathetic. They recommended that their users buy fraud prevention services. I wouldn't be surprised if The Guardian received commissions on the sale of those services, which would make this intolerable situation even worse as The Guardian would be profiting off of the inadequate security measures that it chose to put into place.

A number of job boards have been hacked and many, many more will be. The information contained in a job seeker registration is quite valuable to those who want to profit by stealing the identity of others. Many job seekers include their entire work history, educational background, contact information, and even social security numbers. Anyone with access to that information can take out a credit card in your name and then use that card to fraudulently buy products. They're stealing from the retailers in some cases and the banks in many other cases, but they're also stealing from the job seeker even if the job seeker ends up not being saddled with the bill because the fraud will inevitably harm the credit score of the job seeker.