When there is a very negative press articles about our competition, we decided not to comment them. Here s one from the Irish Times, about the Jobs.ie Web site being hacked. It happened to Monster and http://www.irishgradjobs.ie/ only a few months ago. And now Jowbs.ie is hacked as well. Unfortunately the bad news like this are damaging he industry. Here goes the full story about Jobs.ie web site hacked:
Hackers access information sent to Irish jobs agency
PERSONAL INFORMATION supplied by job applicants to online recruitment agency Jobs.ie has been illegally accessed by internet hackers, writes Olivia Kelly.
CVs submitted by the applicants were downloaded in bulk through a non-Irish web address last Thursday.
Jobs.ie would not say how many of its clients had been affected, but said it had now fixed the security breach.
The clients whose information was taken are at risk from identity fraud and “phishing”, where criminals, often posing as a well-known, legitimate company, use the information gleaned to try to extract further personal and financial information from their victims.
It is understood that the hackers used an illegally obtained log-in and password given to employers who are registered with Jobs.ie to access the job applications area of the site. They then downloaded personal information from CVs submitted, along with job applications.
Most of the stolen information relates to archive CVs rather than those of people now looking for jobs.
The company, which is owned by businessman Denis O’Brien, has in recent days contacted those affected to warn them of the possibility that they may receive e-mails from people using their information.
“All of the people affected have been contacted and informed of the situation. We have urged them to exercise extra vigilance with inbound e-mails in the coming weeks to ensure online security,” a spokeswoman said.
The company has informed the Data Protection Commissioner but will not be informing the relevant policing authorities until it has identified which country the hackers’ web address originated in. Jobs.ie was still investigating this issue, the spokeswoman said last night.
Clients of the website affected by the breach received an e-mail last Friday from Huw Taylor of Jobs.ie, bringing their attention to a “security breach” that occurred the previous evening.
“Although this breach was identified and stopped quickly, a small number of CVs were illegally downloaded. Unfortunately, your CV was one of the records taken.
“I understand and apologise for the concern this will cause you, and I want to assure you that we are taking steps to prevent this happening again,” the e-mail continued.
It urged clients not to give any personal information until it had been established the contact was legitimate; never to give out personal banking information; not to share passwords with anyone; and not to open e-mail attachments if the client was suspicious, especially .exe files.
Victims of the security breach who contacted The Irish Times said they had “grave concerns” in relation to their exposure to identity theft.
Jobs.ie, one of the State’s largest recruitment sites, said it had never before had such a breach.
The security breach follows the recent launch by Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan of the “makeITsecure” campaign designed to combat phishing.
© 2008 The Irish Times
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Just saw a quite unusual Google AdWords campaign for the Irish job advertising market. The Irish Defence Forces is advertising (and paying the TOP Google AdWords rate!) for their add to be displayed for the keyword ‘jobs’ in Google.ie. 
