Giving Out Sensitive Mystery Shopper Data (Ask The Coach)

Question:

I recently made e-mail contact with a mystery shopping company. As part of the employment process they requested that I upload a copy of my driver's license. Is this a legitimate request?

Answer From Coach Melanie:

While it can be a legitimate request for a driver's license for either identity purposes, or to verify that you have one to complete shops, I would be wary about uploading a document that is a key one for identity theft to a company's web site. If the major financial institutions and DMVs are having trouble keeping customers' sensitive data out of the wrong hands, how secure is a mystery shopping company's web site?

Also, are you definitely going to do any work for this company? Many companies ask for all kinds of personal information and then you never do job one for them. I like to refrain from giving out sensitive data like my social security number and driver's license, birthdate--things that can be used in identity fraud--until such time as I actually do a job for the company. I have worked with many companies and schedulers who never asked for any of those items, and it seemed like the ones that did, I never ended up working with anyway.

You can offer to send such materials/info upon receipt of your first job instead.

Have a great day and happy shopping!

Taking the mystery out of professional mystery shopping--Melanie Jordan http://www.mysteryshoppercoach.com

Copyright 2005 Melanie R. Jordan E-Publishing