Friday, September 25, 2015

The 3 R's: Rinse, Repeat, Re-sell


Earlier this year I had the misfortune of coming into contact with MyJobMatcher; they'd essentially bought peoples personal data from data traders around the world to artificially inflate their candidate database, rather than work on gaining direct subscribers. They settled my claim for breaches of the DPA and PECR out of court with no associated admission of liability.

The end of the story? Lessons learned? Of course not. I got an email recently from MJM claiming that SpellJobs.com had suggested I would be interested in MJM's services. Anyway so if I want to log in and...Wait. What?

So one jobs board is passing on candidates to another competitor? After unlawfully acquiring my details from the original jobs board that'd I'd actually used? Of course. All of this makes perfect sense. Who the hell are SpellJobs.com? Their contact page just goes to a PHP error and the about us page is tellingly blank.
Karen - what have you done?
The shopping basket doesn't work either. I've had a look in between the lines at spelljobs.com and it appears to allow the general public to search and scrape job seeker data. The T's and C's look suspect to say the least too. I may add this to the LSP R&D portal as a new scam alert depending on how the SAR pans out.

Due to the no-contact agreement I'm currently in conversation with Mr Lawrence Weeks of Birketts LLP, representing MJM, and they've disclosed the contact details they use in their commercial relationship with SpellJobs.com. Although after doing a bit of digging it looks like SpellJobs.com isn't a registered business but it is either associated with Job Circle Ltd or Datasource Computer Employment Ltd. I've already knocked on that door with another SAR. I'd already sent Job Circle and another apparent linked entity a SAR each to cover all bases.

After my initial SAR to MJM via Birketts I've had a number of automated emails from MJMs systems saying that they are sorry to see me go but my account has been closed.

However now Birketts are asking me if I can supply other emails so they can be de-listed from MJM systems in future. But isn't that missing the point by a very wide margin? Surely they should stop their unlawful data and unsolicited communications practices to prevent them acquiring data they had no consent for in the first place?

Updated

It looks like their parent company haven't filed accounts but are still active (someone has applied to have the compulsory strike off suspended) and part equity sold to GMC Ltd. - MJM directors are directors of parent companies and other recruitment or data analysis firms.

After lodging a new claim in the courts against MJM we successfully negotiated a settlement to end this - and hopefully - future disputes.