Fake ** Freelancers

[#1]

Dearest Upwork -

I am a premium employer and between my two accounts, I easily spend 400k a year.   I have found that my support as a premium employer has become non-existent.  I have always had great account managers but now they all seem to have disappeared and I have no direct point of contact at Upwork.  I cannot imagine any other business having a client who spends as much as I do and not providing them direct access to an account manager.  But that's not what I am writing about.  

My bigger concern is the rampant and OUT OF CONTROL issue of phony freelancer accounts.  I recently tried to hire for a job and out of 5 interviews, all 5 were not in the country they claimed to be from.  Some claimed to be in East Europe and others claimed to be in Canada or the United States.  I voice verified with them and they were all Chinese.   I have been reporting this issue for years, yet Upwork seems to not want to do anything about it.  It seems like it would be pretty simple to weed out these fakes, given that I found 5 of them on ONE job post.  I think that Upwork is turning a blind eye to this problem because they are still getting paid on work these phony developers do.  This is a total disservice to people like myself who depend on Upwork.  By ignoring the issue you are allowing employers to get scammed, the very people you depend on for your business.  

At any rate, here are a few of the fake Chinese Profiles for my most recent job posting.  Notice that ALL these profiles say rising talent or top rated:

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

[#2]

I have found the same thing.  Ill post a job for USA only, yet a lot of the responses are clearly people claiming to be in the US but they are in other countries like pakistan. 

[#3]

re: "I have found the same thing.  I'll post a job for USA only, yet a lot of the responses are clearly people claiming to be in the US but they are in other countries like pakistan."

It is a real problem.

The overwhelming majority of freelancers in that country are honest and professional and are upfront about where they live. Upwork clients are happy to hire freelancers from that and other countries.

Freelancers who live in a country and lie about their location give the honest freelancers in that country a bad name. Which is unfair, but it's true. If 99% of the freelancers in "Country X" are honest about where they live, but a client encounters 5 freelancers in a row from that country who are dishonest about who they are or where they live, our naturally pattern-forming minds are going to notice a trend.

[#4]

so i reported these plagerized profiles over a week ago to upwork's 'My requests'. They send me boilerplate text that tell me nothing about what they are doing. And the scammers remain. I went to the 'My Reqests' section to reply to the ticket they call 'SOLVED'. BUt it seems they have lock the tickets somehow so i cannot. I guess they dont care and dont want to be bothered with people reporting fake profiles that violate terms. 

[#5]

Hi Michael,

Thank you for your message. I am sorry to hear about your experience with the team. You can create a follow up ticket by responding to the email notification for the support ticket sent to your registered email address on Upwork account. 

Thank you,

Pradeep

[#6]

i created a follow up ticket. upwork closed the previous one and marked 'solved'.

I reported fakes in pakistan aug 24. I have given the info to find these fakes but there are always ones there that are copies of my profile. Sometimes 7 at a time. 4 at the moment.

I find the responses from Upwork to be rather insulting saying they are taking action but then nothing happens. 
I have lost confidence in upwork. Reponses seem to be canned responses they paste again and again. 

i find upwork to be offensive now, like they dont care if their terms are violated and treat legitimate contractors as **Edited for Community Guidelines**. Looking forward to finding a better way to work.

[#7]

Hi Michael,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. It would be best to work with the team assisting you now as they are the right department to resolve your concern. I followed up with them to make sure that they get this message as well.

[#8]

I am a new freelancer in Nairobi, Kenya and this is distressing to hear. There should be KYC with ID and address verification. The account identity verification should happen altleast annually.  

It would also be critical to have a form of client verification. This affect freelancers as well. 

[#9]

This is bad news for honest Freelancers and Clients as well. 

The culprit, in my opinion, is:

1. Lack of client verification - everybody can become his own "client" and hand out jobs with good feedback, becoming a fake 100% JSS, fake Rising Talent machine.
2. Lack of "test job" category (low budget jobs, the completion of which doesn't influence your profile) - the result being, jobs like "create a website copy of Upwork.com from the ground up" with $5 USD budgets can be posted by "clients", without raising suspicion

Projects should have a ballpark price range, if the budget should be $1000 but is $5 instead - the job posting should be red flagged and the "client" and his "freelancers" put under scrutiny.

I have stumbled upon whole profiles, with hundreds of jobs completed, and the total spend amount under $1k, meaning all the jobs were under USD. And all of them were complex jobs, demanding a high budget.

What also got my attention, was that the jobs posted all had 5*Star reviews for client and freelancer.
Very unusual, very "fishy"!

The Client, posting this thread, is a victim of this practice.
As a result, Freelancers are unable to get through to their clients, who are buried in a heap of scam-spam. They are victims too.

With all that said, I am sure, that the Upwork team is working on a solution as we speak.
May their efforts be fruitful, we are all counting on you guys!

[#10]

I understand verifying client and freelancers are important, however red flagging clients who hire freelancers for less than 1000 a job is a BAD IDEA, budget is limited and not every Job require 1000 dollars payment...

[#11]

When I listed my profile here, I was asked to verify and send in my ID etc. Perhaps the site should use the blue checkmark or make us freelancers more visible to jobs instead of buying connects to get noticed when replying to jobs. I  see that many people that hire here look for cheaper candidates outside the USA and sometimes end up with sub-par work. Hiring someone based on a low budget diminishes the value of your project and then you have to spend more money to get it right again. It's not about how much content you produce, it's about the quality of the content and how your customers react to it. Any candidate for example should be able to show the value they bring for that specific project and why. Your content only gets one chance to make a great impression. Hire wisely.

[#12]

I am a freelancer and I get constantly questions if I am really from Europe. To be honest I would pay Upwork a small fee if the Vetted me and give me a badge to show that I am really who I am.

[#13]

I wouldn't mind paying a fee to be vetted provided Upwork put an end to geoblocking, which encourages people to use VPNs to lie about their whereabouts. 

[#14]

We just had someone try what appeared to be a really bad deep fake. 

After too many bad experiences with voice calls and the person having a very heavy, noticeable accent from somewhere other than where they say they are, we've resorted to video calls. 

Today, the call started without the freelancer having their camera on despite the fact that I specifically asked them in our messages if they'd be open to doing so and they responded to the affirmative.

When they turned their camera on, an image of a young, white male appeared but there was something odd about it. It didn't move, I mean, at all. And it didn't blink either, which was creepy as hell. When it talked, its lips barely moved and the person behind it said very little so as to not give away their heavy accent. 

At first, we thought it might be a glitchy connection, but after several minutes, it was clear it wasn't. I called them out on it and said their video looks weird and they haven't blinked in several minutes. I asked them to turn their head to the left and they pretended not to understand, then the mic muted. I asked one of our team members who were on the call to speak to them in Portuguese (The interviewee was supposed to be from Brazil) and suddenly, they ended the call.

I flagged the account and wrote specific details to Upwork customer service about what happened. 

We're long-time users of Upwork and like the OP, have spent several hundred thousand dollars. 

As far as I'm concened, there's no incentive for Upwork to change anything with the system. The fake freelancers are still getting hired and Upwork takes a percentage of that. 

For what it's worth, we don't care where you are in the world, but if you try to lie and fake your way to getting a job and we catch you, we have no use for you.

(Based on what I've said here, I fully expect this post to be removed by Upwork citing "community guidelines", but I hope someone gets to see it before that happens)

[#15]

I don't know what guideline you would have violated if they do edit anything out. Your post looks pretty clean to me.

[#16]

Hi Todd, 

I'm sorry to learn about your experience. On Upwork, we have multiple verification processes to confirm a user's identity and location. Freelancers are also randomly verified more than once to ensure that their profile and account information is accurate. It looks like you've already reported this freelancer, but for the benefit of those following this discussion, it's best to report suspicious user activity by following the steps here. 

You may also send me a private message with the freelancer's details so I can follow up on your report. 

[#17]

I just joined looking for freelances and I've noticed this too. I have interviewed 3 frelancers and they all lived in contries that were not as specified in their profile, their name was different and they did't show up in the video. Two of them also asked me to continue the conversation on telegram. Na not good.

[#18]

You must report them.
https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/211063118-Report-Suspicious-User-Activity

[#19]

Hi Maria T,

1 Ans- I am from Bangladesh, and due to my passport not having dual currency on my visa card, I have not been able to make payment to my Upwork account after several attempts.

I'm Not a fake Freelancer, 

2 Ans- For my convenience, I read the client's job post, write it separately, then I do the proposal because it takes too long to write the proposal page and I write it neatly, then read it over and over and try to catch mistakes. Then I bring the complete copy and give the proposal. It makes very few mistakes. Because it is better to read again and again.

I am trying very hard. Trying to apply for a premium plus membership on my account as soon as possible.

I get messaged as a Fake Freelancer because I work fast.

If you think it's a problem, then I won't give any proposals like that again in the future.

[#20]

Sorry but I have no idea why you are telling me this.
I don't really understand what you're talking about either, to be honest.

1- If you have problems paying (the connects or what do you mean?), you must contact CS. If you're talking about something else, you'll tell us.
2 - I think it's very good that you do that to write the proposals. I do it too because I'm not an English speaker. But I don't know why you're telling us this.

By "premium plus membership" do you mean "Freelancer Plus plan"?
Really, you have to pay $15 and I don't think the benefits are worth it.
You can better use that $15 to buy a bunch of connects, I think 100.

"I get messaged as a Fake Freelancer because I work fast.", I don't understand this.

"If you think it's a problem, then I won't give any proposals like that again in the future.", and I don't understand this either.

What does the screenshot refer to?

[#21]

I reported the Fake Freelancers, very little has been done to rectify this problem , despite Elance / Upwork reaching out. Anyway there are also plenty or Real Profiles to choose from. Best way to tell is have a voice call with them, Accent is dead giveaway.

[#22]

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Steven R wrote:

Best way to tell is have a voice call with them, Accent is dead giveaway.

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Excuse me? Personally I don't do phone calls or video chats, it's just the way I operate. And English is not my native language, you're going to dismiss me because of an accent? Ridiculous.

[#23]

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Steven R wrote:

I reported the Fake Freelancers, very little has been done to rectify this problem , despite Elance / Upwork reaching out. Anyway there are also plenty or Real Profiles to choose from. Best way to tell is have a voice call with them, Accent is dead giveaway.

---

Like Olga, I don't make calls either, just like her I am not an English speaker. Would you report me for that?
It doesn't seem to me that this makes us not good candidates. It seems to me that you could lose good freelancers this way.
I know that English is important, but there are many languages in the world (with many speakers in each one) and not all of us have learned enough English.

[#24]

Hi Maria T,

Please Help me so that I can get a fast job in Upwor. 

Thanks

[#25]

There is no way to help you get a job here. The only way to achieve this is with a good profile and sending proposals. There are no short cuts.
I have no knowledge of your field, so I can tell you little.

You must delete your email from "Employment history". This section is not to tell what you do as if it were your presentation, but to list the jobs you have had.
And "Other experiences" is not to repeat the same thing as before.

[#26]

I agree, its amazing how long this thread has gone, since I originally posted it. As someone who hires Freelancers my original problems was Fake profiles, they were not who they claimed to be. Hard to believe from that point on if anything about them is real or not. You make a good point but also Aim to Exceed Expectations, that will go a long way to develope credibility.