If you are out of a job or looking for one, be forewarned: A new Business Week article is blowing the whistle on identity theft that targets job hunters. As the jobless rate soars, scammers are setting up fake job sites where they ask for an applicant's Social Security number and other personal information.

"The job-seeker market has slowly but surely been invaded by scammers," Jay Foley, executive director of the Identity Theft Resource Center told Business Week.

The Federal Trade Commission is keeping track of what's happening. In 2008, about 15 percent of the more than 300,000 complaints involved employment-related identity theft, according to the magazine. The number of fraud victims reached nearly 10 million in 2008, according to the 2009 Identity-fraud Survey Report released by the consulting firm Javelin Strategy & Research.

So what's an IT job hunter to do? Know what you are dealing with and make sure that you do not turn over your Social Security number until you have a job offer in hand. If someone is requesting your SSN prematurely, be forewarned it may not be legitimate. Don't fax the number, don't email it and never post it on a job site.

And if you are looking for an IT job, remember that your potential employer is well aware of identity theft issues and should respect your reluctance to pass along your Social Security number prematurely. If they don't, there's something fishy about the encounter.

For more on job hunting scams:
- check out this Business Week article

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