Monster.com data breached again

As if current job-seekers don't have enough woe, Monster.com is warning its users that data kept on its servers has been breached -- names, user IDs and passwords, e-mail addresses, contact information, phone numbers, and "some basic demographic data."

The announcement on the Monster site is dated January 23 (Friday), but considering Monster.com's track record over the past couple of years, they might as well just keep a copy on file for reuse. August 2007 saw an attack on the service that breached 1.3 million accounts and led to a mini-epidemic of phishing; later that year, another attack resulted in malware infections for hapless seekers who clicked to compromised pages on the monster.com site.

Monster.com says it will send out no further notifications concerning the breach, but that in the near future users may be required to change their passwords. Your friends at Betanews suggest that you do that now just to be sensible.

USAJobs.gov, the site for those seeking jobs with the federal government, uses the Monster.com back end and was also affected, as a note on that site explains.

It is believed that no use has yet been made by the thieves of the purloined data.