The Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS)

The Center for Education and Research in
Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS)

Google learning from the Nigerians?

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[tags]Google, spam[/tags]
Today I received email from a google.com address.  The sender said he had found me by doing a search on the WWW.  He indicated he hoped I wasn’t offended by his sending unsolicited email.  However, he had a great offer for me, one that I was uniquely qualified for, and then offered a couple of URLs.

Does that sound familiar?

My first thought was that it was a 419 scam (the usual “I am the son of the crown prince of Nigeria…” letters).  However, after checking out the mail headers and the enclosed URLs, it appears to be a (semi) legit letter from a Google recruiter.  He was asking if I was open to considering a new, exciting position with Google.

And what exciting new position does the Google recruiter think I’m ideally suited for?  Starting system administrator…..

And by the way, sending email to “abuse@google.com” gets an automated response that states, in no uncertain terms, that Google never sends spam and that I should take my complaints elsewhere.

Gee, think this is a new career possibility for me?

[posted with ecto]

Comments

Posted by Anonymous
on Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 12:20 AM

OMG!!
Was it from Yvonne McMahon?

Even I received it like a month ago for Systems or Network Security Engineers role raspberry

Posted by Steve
on Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 03:08 AM

Wow, Google really is scrapping the bottom of the barrel to find candidates these days grin.

You should send him back an autographed copy of PUIS.


Steve

Posted by stacy
on Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 03:43 AM

If you’re looking for a “new career”, I could probably get you a job as an “intermediate system administrator” grin

Posted by Spaf
on Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 10:48 AM

But wouldn’t that all be a step down from “Security Curmudgeon”?  grin

Posted by Chris Walsh
on Sunday, May 20, 2007 at 08:11 AM

There’s something systemic about this.

Last year, attendees at the FIRST conference (I cannot say all of them, but I know it was more than just myself) received unsolicited email from a chap recruiting for Google.

That would have been about 11 months ago.  Not sure if these are simply isolated incidents, or what.

Google was quick to respond to this event (and to yours, it seems).  I think this is a case of people overzealously chasing a commission.  It is probably hard to prevent that.

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