Recently, our agency New Point Recruitment was subject to an impersonation scam, where a number of individuals received email communications regarding a job opportunity. These emails falsely claim to come from New Point Recruitment and allege that the recipient’s details were sourced from SEEK.

We take our reputation and the privacy of individuals very seriously. These emails are fraudulent and are not affiliated with New Point Recruitment or SEEK.

ABOUT THE BREACH – WHAT SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY IS OCCURING?

  • EMAIL: Initially, a candidate would receive an email from a fake email address of either olivia.harper@newpointrecruitment.site, melanie.brown@newpointrecruitment.site or jade.gregory@newpointrecruitment.site (which has been traced to Russia) alerting candidates of an Administrative opportunity. These two people do not exist and are not employed by New Point Recruitment.  DO NOT RESPOND TO EITHER EMAIL – they lead the person down a path with a fake job opportunity and eventually, the aim of a phishing scam, is to steal your data.
  • WHATSAPP or TEXT MESSAGE : A text message/SMS scam, also targeting candidates with the Bot representing a fake profile named Ruby. We have already reported the mobile number however, it is likely to pop up again with a new number
  • FACEBOOK: Related to this initial hack, there has been activity on Facebook whereby, a Facebook profile is hacked and the impersonator posts in a local job group page, a similar job opportunity and phishing scam. Report the post to the Group Admin and Facebook and they are removed quite quickly

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO:

  • Do not respond to the email, text or Facebook advertisement
  • Our aim is to stop this! Please contact our agency via our contact page with a copy of the email you received or you can also call us on 1300558979 to report the breach.
  • Block the email address or mobile number and report the number or email as a phishing scam. We have found that reporting the Facebook advert is very effective (they act fast on deleting the post)

WHAT WE HAVE DONE ABOUT THIS:

  • We have engaged a Cybersecurity Consultant, contacted SEEK and our Server Administrator to identify the origins of the hack. It appears that it did not breach our personal database or go through our systems at all.
  • We have confirmed that no emails are being sent from our webmail servers – we are @newpointrecruitment.com.au (not @newpointrecruitment.site) and no spike on email activity has been found on our Logs
  • We have reported this to ACMA and ACCC Scamwatch – you can also do the same
  • When notified of a candidate being contacted, we immediately action this by reporting it.

MOVING FORWARD:

We would like to thank you for your patience and understanding that we are also a victim of this impersonation phishing scam and are doing the best we can to maintain our reputation as a leading Gold Coast recruitment agency. Your help and cooperation, in working with us to stop this is welcomed and appreciated.