Years ago when the Superbowl commercial was aired pointing out how kids everywhere wanted to be a “yes” man, I was on the job market. I had been looking for a replacement for my creative agency job. It never happened, and I’m actually quite glad I didn’t take a couple of offers due to the volatility of both the financial and employment sectors.

It was envious to some and the content of case studies to others that Monster.com had been one of the first, real profitable success stories of the Web. They had survived the bubble burst because, let’s face it, the ones who placed their information online in a desperate attempt to hold dearly to their overvalued lifestyles were those directly related to the burst itself.

Monster.com would ask you for anything and everything and for those of us who were dead set on protecting the image of the Web by touting its security (fools!), we gladly gave over our names, addresses, entire history of employment, and even our salary history. In some cases, we answered questionnaires that focused on our grocery habits and the way we purchased vehicles and other big-ticket items.

What we didn’t do was keep an eye on how the information was being handled.

Unfortunately, Monster.com wasn’t either. At least, they didn’t keep up with the best methods for protecting the fact that I had purchased two cars in the span of six months.

A second issue has been brought to the attention of the masses who use their site that they were possibly subjected to malware and other atrocities due to the fact that they weren’t carefully monitoring their back door.

Monster.com has a huge problem on it’s hands. It needs to rebuild from a self-inflicted brand wound. It needs to cure itself from brand destruction and it needs to do it soon.

This once jewel of the Route 66 of Internet history is now a second-time offender to the security of the information it has been asked to protect. How do they rebuild the trust? How will they turn this around?

Monster needs to get some airplay on soon about how they care about security and trust, but that’s only going to happen once they publicly admit that they’ve made some sloppy mistakes.

I wish I could go back and stop TJX, The Boston Globe and Monster.com and all the other careless back door hole companies from letting my information roam free, but that’s not going to happen. I am still happily part of the trusting masses, albeit a little less trusting these days.

The only thing I can do now is deal with the Monster itself.