Copycat Recruiting Sites?
I admit that I am puzzled by the idea of a 3rd party acting as a recruiter for the military, when all you have to do is look up recruiting offices for the various military branches and go see the people there.
From the article:
The government has shut down at least eight “copycat” military recruiting websites run by companies accused of using deceptive practices to entice potential recruits into providing their personal information, then selling the information to post-secondary schools.
According to the Federal Trade Commission’s complaint, the companies’ websites appeared to be official recruiting sites — such as army.com, armyenlist.com, airforceenlist.com, marinesenlist.com, navyenlist.com,coastguardentlist.com, airguardenlist.com, nationalguardenlist.com and armyreserves.com. The companies agreed to give up the domain names and stop the alleged deceptive practices.
“Those who are considering a military career deserve to have confidence that the recruitment site is legitimate and their personal information will not be misused,” said FTC Chairman Joe Simons, in an announcement about the FTC action. “The FTC will take action against any party in the lead generation ecosystem — from sellers to purchasers — that fails to comply with the law.”
As I said, I’m puzzled by this. There are military recruiting offices within a very few miles of most of us. In fact, if you’re near NAVSTA Great Lakes, you could probably just call the MEPs people there and apply to join the Navy over the phone. They might even send a driver to pick you up. They graduate recruit classes every week now, from what I’ve been told. Or if you’d rather get the literature and discuss your possibilities, you can find the real recruiters online and pick up the phone.
For example, call one of these, if you’re really interested:
Marine Corps Recruiting –
934-N N Green Bay Rd · (847) 662-0947
Closed ? Opens 8AM Mon
U.S. Army Recruiting Office
932 N Green Bay Rd · (847) 662-5260
Closed ? Opens 9AM Mon
US Naval Reserve Recruiting
2834 Green Bay Rd B · (847) 688-7100
Or you could simply drive there. There might still be a place downtown in Chicago. Used to be one on South Clark Street, but that’s gone now. They’re scattered all over the place. But the REAL recruiters are the people you should be talking to, not some questionable 3rd party who, as the FTC has indicated, is asking for your personal info and selling it.
As I said, I cannot imagine what would possess anyone who is even thinking about going into any branch of the military to go through a 3rd party, at all. The real recruiters are the people you should talk to.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", "Your Tax Dollars At Work"
Scams usually work for a couple reasons- lazy people, or “too good to be true.” Sounds like this was the former, where the potential recruits thought they could join up from Mom’s basement, and never see the light of day.
I’d guess it was more along the lines of “send us some info about yourself, and we’ll send you an analysis of which career fields are the best fit for you” pitch. I can see someone who’s young and a bit naive (and who’s grown up where going online was an everyday and frequent thing) falling for that kind of fishing.
Good on the FTC for putting the kibosh on this. “Deceptive” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Not only did it interfere with legitimate government business (military recruiting), it could easily lead to industrial-scale identity theft.
I have to wonder as well – how much of that was a direct result of kids being products of the “technology age” wherein they really have zero inclination of actually getting off their butts and going and doing physical research? If it’s on the computer, it must be true, so these places have to be on the up and up in their minds.
There’s some question about how much money from the recruiting end of the DoD budget went into the pockets of these scammers.
There is an indication that they were getting some minor funds in addition to the fees that the company got for selling personal info, which is why the FTC investigation started.
Amazing.
Is it ” as long as there is teh stoopid there will be scams” or “as long as there are scams you will have teh stoopid”? Both are born every day I guess.
Maybe they should have left them alone… they may have been filtering out some of the less intelligent recruits. I mean, if you are stupid enough to fall for this crap, do I really want you in my Army?
Just a thought…
As I recall my late teen years and early 20’s, I was practically stalked by recruiters. Even after I’d enlisted, I’d still get calls every now and then.
Can’t imagine it’s gotten harder to find a recruiter.