Free lancer publishing confidential material in her profile inspite of Client not giving permission

[cc81adb4]

Hi all,

As a client I had a dispute with a Free lancer called **Edited for Community Guidelines** 
. She did not do my work correctly and also asked for payment. The Upwork mediation team returned me the budgeted amount in escrow after the free lancer did not want to go to Arbitration.  I had not given her permission to publish any material related to this work in her profile. Inspite of that , the Free lancer has show cased the work as ABC Business Plan. I would like to know why Upwork is allowing the Free lancer to do so.

She should remove the work from her profile immediately. 

Regards

Anirban ( Director - **Edited for Community Guidelines**)

[g_vasilevski]

Hi Anirban,

I`m sorry to hear about the bad experience you`ve had with your freelancer. Our team reached out to you via ticket to assist you further, please refer to your ticket with number 30532245. Thank you.

[petra_r]

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ANIRBAN S wrote:

She did not do my work correctly and also asked for payment. The Upwork mediation team returned me the budgeted amount in escrow after the free lancer did not want to go to Arbitration.  I had not given her permission to publish any material related to this work in her profile.. 

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If you didn't pay for it, you don't own it... (minus any material you supplied to the freelancer) -  You can't have it both ways. If you want to own the material, you pay for it, then it is yours. 

[prestonhunter]

Petra is correct.

Upwork should not remove this freelancer's work from the platform.

This is her work and she has the right to showcase it in her portfolio or do whatever she wants with it.

Anirban: I am sorry if you are disappointed by this turn of events, but this has nothing to do with you.

One must think about these things logically. If I am a client, and I hire a freelancer to work on my behalf, then of course I will zealously work to make sure that freelancer is paid for all of her work. If I am protective of my intellectual property and want to be sure that I maintain tight control over everything being produced, then I will be particularly zealous.

Especially when I hire freelancers on a platform whose rules explicitly state that any work that is not paid for belongs to the freelancer.

People who feel wronged are likely to demonstrate a certain lack of loyalty to the ones who they feel wronged them.

As a freelancer, it is very common for clients to ask to set up a contract with me and start paying me for my time even very early on, even during initial discussions about a project. Those clients want even our verbal discussions to belong to them.

Serious clients realize that they might not actually use all of the work that they pay for. But they will OWN the work, and they can then decide what to use or not use. They can't do that if they ask freelancers to work on their behalf and then manipulate the system so as to avoid paying for the work.

[prestonhunter]

If I saw something online that I wanted removed, wouldn't an exceedingly simple solution be for me to buy all the rights to that item? And as part of that negotiation, explicitly stipulate that the owner will remove it from the place where he has it online?

[a_lipsey]

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Preston H wrote:

If I saw something online that I wanted removed, wouldn't an exceedingly simple solution be for me to buy all the rights to that item? And as part of that negotiation, explicitly stipulate that the owner will remove it from the place where he has it online?

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If the freelancer is using information that was supplied by the client that is confidential then this is a different matter. She could use a redacted version for her portfolio, but if she signed an NDA, then she would be in breach. 

[efecd16d]

can i apply as a freelancer maam im intrested and willing to know everything and willing to work 24hrs

[d21eff28]

I am new to upwork and am planning to hire some freelancer to work on finance and data analysis.  Has anyone encounter breach of confidentiality issues with freelancers on upwork?  Even with NDA's, it really depends on the integrity of the freelancers.  

[yofazza]

NDAs are also not enforceable, unless probably if you both live in the same country.

I have a client a law firm in the US. They never gave me any confidential thing/access despite working with them for over a decade. 

But on the other hand I also have another law firm client for around a year, and they gave me some secret data already 😀

So it's up to you but know the risk.

[efecd16d]

ok