Important Safety Information, Protect your private information Options

[NurseChat]

Dear Members,

Members should be very cautious when giving out their personal information to strangers on the internet.

In particular, there was a recent post on the NurseChat.com message board suggesting that the NY Post newspaper was offering $800 rewards to nurses sending their resumes to a certain email address (that post has since been deleted). It was an obvious scam, and the post was deleted after I saw it (the email address ended in @post.com, which is NOT the NY Post newspaper). The member who posted it has since had their membership suspended for 20 years. It appears to have been from a recruiter, trying to spam for resumes in an illegitimate manner.

There are legitimate recruiters who are members of the board, and we're glad to have them. Members should decide for themselves whether a given post seems to be legitimate to respond to (although we'll try to delete any suspicious ones). Legitimate recruiters tend to have their own websites, with telephone information, and very public contact information. While we can't police or get rid of abusers 100% of the time (it's up to the individual to safeguard their personal information), we can send a clear message that abusers aren't welcome here by swiftly banning them when we do see them. Feel free to contact us if you feel that a member of the board is acting in a suspicious manner either on the message board or in the chat room. There is a "report" button attached to each message of the message board, that can be clicked to report inappropriate messages to the webmaster.

For other personal safety tips when using the internet, the following websites might be useful:

http://security.yahoo.com/
http://www.getnetwise.org/

On a positive note, the board has over 600 members at this time. If you've not visited in a while, now might be the time to do so. The chat room is enabled, too, for those who wish to chat in real-time (although it has been tricky getting a "critical mass" of regular chatters in there). If you've forgotten your password, you can have it re-sent to you. If you've not "validated" your account (by clicking the link in the email that was sent to you when you signed up), you can have that re-sent too.

I hope everyone is having a great 2004!

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
Webmaster
www.NurseChat.com
416-588-0269