Australia's largest private vocational education network, Careers Australia, is buying data from job ad websites to target job seekers as it rapidly expands its call centre operations after a government crackdown on face-to-face sales. 
In   July, Brisbane teenager Troy Hatrick told the ABC he was inadvertently signed up to a $20,000 a year course in leadership and management after he had been called by Careers Australia. He was looking for a job when he put his details into Jobify, a job search website that when Fairfax visited multiple times last week contained no contact numbers for employers and had no job links that worked.
Users are prompted to sign up and enter their details through a wizard that tells them in the fine print they are agreeing to be contacted by education providers. This data is then sold to companies such as Careers Australia, which billed the taxpayer $230 million last year in student loans.
A spokesman for Jobify said when Fairfax Media visited the site it was undergoing maintenance to ensure compliance with requirements. It has since added a "resume writing" portal to its online offering, but its privacy policy is largely dedicated to selling job seekers data.
The site is owned by 23-year-old Melbourne university friends Jake Foster and Paul Mitchell, the chairman and founding president of the prestigious Monash University 180-degrees consulting program.
Mr Foster's other education venture, Go Careers, is being investigated by the Federal Department of Education after concerns were raised by a former employee that the company was deliberately targeting vulnerable people to sign them up to diploma courses.
"The department is investigating a number of matters to determine if they are in breach of provider and broker obligations under new measures introduced by the Government in 2015," a department spokesman said.
In   November, former employee Liam Hyland alleged the company was selling diploma courses to people he believed had responded to fake job advertising. "They were all quite vulnerable people; they were people that were looking for work," he said.
Internal documents seen by Fairfax Media from the company's call centre guide operators through obtaining an applicant's tax file number through their Centrelink profile.
In a statement, a spokesman for Go Careers said Mr Hyland was a disgruntled ex-employee who had worked for the company for only four days. He denied deliberately contacting vulnerable people.
Go Careers, an education broker that does not teach students, was selling diploma courses on behalf of Careers Australia, where a current employee has told Fairfax Media its business model is highly contingent on telephone sales made mostly to people at home during the middle of the day.
A spokesman for Careers Australia, Gerard Benedet, said the company had worked extremely hard to improve its processes and procedures, and ensure it is fully compliant with all legislative requirements.