Dear Joyce: In response to an online job posting on a company (Company A) Web site, I e-mailed my résumé. Other than an automatic response -- "We received your résumé..." -- I never heard again from Company A.

But, in a new and unsettling development, my boss called me in yesterday. He said my résumé had been found on a well-known job board and that, as a result, Company B called him for a reference. He wasn't happy.

I thought that companies to which you applied would keep your résumé confidential (not share it with others). Is this unwritten rule of business another casualty of the new economy? -- J.F.R.

Dear J.F.R.: Résumé information spills in the job market -- whether by accident, incompetence, theft or design.

Back in B.I. (before Internet) days, paper résumé swapping was virtually unknown because the mechanics were an inconvenience.

But in point-and-click times, shuffling documents like résumés around the globe is a snap. Robot technology may be snatching your résumé from an insecure résumé bank while you sleep.

Choose Recipients Wisely
If you're desperate for quick employment, you might want your résumé scattered throughout the e-ways. But people who understand career management strategies want to control and protect their information.

So unless you enter the electronic marketplace with the expressed purpose of blasting your résumé to anyone willing to receive it, you have a right to expect confidentiality. Putting your business on the e-street by unauthorized persons is a serious breach of your privacy and who knows to what legal actions such violations will lead.

Majority of Companies OK
Most companies exert good stewardship of your data and don't share it. After all, today's résumés are the building blocks for valuable internal-search databases. And legally aware companies know that it makes better business sense to junk unqualified résumés than to pass them on.

Job boards might share job seekers depending on whether or not their résumé bank is open (anyone can look at it), password-protected (supposedly available only to employers with passwords, but privacy is far from secure), or confidential (you are asked each time before your résumé is released to anyone; this is by far the best choice for most people).

Recruiters should always ask your permission before moving your résumé around.

Recruiters Weigh In
The topic of migrating résumés was recently examined on the Electronic Recruiting Exchange, a professional Web forum for recruiters.

A practitioner launched the discussion by asking peers if they think it is legally and ethically OK to pass on résumés that her own division paid for but can't use to a separate division in her company -- a job board, which presumably would post them as new offerings.

Her peers uniformly thought not. (Hooray for ethics!) Here are a few excerpts from their answers: