Freelancer profiles with identical content

cupidmedia · ‎07-17-2019

I'm currently recruiting for several new freelancers. When browsing profiles looking for potential freelancers to invite to one of my active job posts, I discovered two which have a nearly identical first paragraph. It is too specific for it to be a coincidence. I have flagged both their profiles for plagiarised content and linked to the other person in each report, but I'm wondering if there's anything else I can, or should, do?

UPDATE: One of them has now applied for my job. I'm considering asking them if they're aware of this other profile and why some of their content is identical, but I don't know which one is the "bad guy" here and I don't want to either scare off the plagiarised person or alert the plagiariser.

ridoyislam120 · ‎07-17-2019

it's a worrying thing for clients.

Upwork should take a few necessary verified steps against duplicate worker profile.

AveryO · ‎07-17-2019

Hi Jennifer,

It looks like you flagged the profiles directly by clicking on the flag button on their profile. If you have the time, you can also send it to me through a private message so that I can follow up on your report.

~ Avery

cupidmedia · ‎07-18-2019

Hi Avery, thanks, I've PM'd you.

martina_plaschka · ‎07-17-2019

Jennifer D wrote:
I'm currently recruiting for several new freelancers. When browsing profiles looking for potential freelancers to invite to one of my active job posts, I discovered two which have a nearly identical first paragraph. It is too specific for it to be a coincidence. I have flagged both their profiles for plagiarised content and linked to the other person in each report, but I'm wondering if there's anything else I can, or should, do?

UPDATE: One of them has now applied for my job. I'm considering asking them if they're aware of this other profile and why some of their content is identical, but I don't know which one is the "bad guy" here and I don't want to either scare off the plagiarised person or alert the plagiariser.

Just flag them all and avoid them. There are likely many many more who copied profiles, and the people they copied from might not even be on upwork. There's a lot of fraud going on.

colettelewis · ‎07-18-2019

Martina P wrote:
Jennifer D wrote:
I'm currently recruiting for several new freelancers. When browsing profiles looking for potential freelancers to invite to one of my active job posts, I discovered two which have a nearly identical first paragraph. It is too specific for it to be a coincidence. I have flagged both their profiles for plagiarised content and linked to the other person in each report, but I'm wondering if there's anything else I can, or should, do?

UPDATE: One of them has now applied for my job. I'm considering asking them if they're aware of this other profile and why some of their content is identical, but I don't know which one is the "bad guy" here and I don't want to either scare off the plagiarised person or alert the plagiariser.
Just flag them all and avoid them. There are likely many many more who copied profiles, and the people they copied from might not even be on upwork. There's a lot of fraud going on.

_____________________________

Yes, but the problem is when you are the one being copied. (I am about to pm you. Your profile has been copied in part or in full by at least two Upwork freelancers). It has happened to me too at least three times.

m_terrazas · ‎07-18-2019

Nichola L wrote:
Martina P wrote:
Jennifer D wrote:
I'm currently recruiting for several new freelancers. When browsing profiles looking for potential freelancers to invite to one of my active job posts, I discovered two which have a nearly identical first paragraph. It is too specific for it to be a coincidence. I have flagged both their profiles for plagiarised content and linked to the other person in each report, but I'm wondering if there's anything else I can, or should, do?

UPDATE: One of them has now applied for my job. I'm considering asking them if they're aware of this other profile and why some of their content is identical, but I don't know which one is the "bad guy" here and I don't want to either scare off the plagiarised person or alert the plagiariser.
Just flag them all and avoid them. There are likely many many more who copied profiles, and the people they copied from might not even be on upwork. There's a lot of fraud going on.
_____________________________

Yes, but the problem is when you are the one being copied. (I am about to pm you. Your profile has been copied in part or in full by at least two Upwork freelancers). It has happened to me too at least three times.

I have found two, but when entering their profiles, they have changed the presentation. Although the text still appears in Google.

mwiggenhorn · ‎07-18-2019

Maria - I found the same thing today. Not sure if Google is screwed up or if the Freelancers actually copies my profile and then changed it. I tend to believe the first scenario, although this hasn't happened in the past.

lysis10 · ‎07-18-2019

Mary W wrote:
Maria - I found the same thing today. Not sure if Google is screwed up or if the Freelancers actually copies my profile and then changed it. I tend to believe the first scenario, although this hasn't happened in the past.

What likely has happened is the freelancer used your profile to get theirs accepted and then changed it later. Google hasn't crawled the page again to see the changes.

m_terrazas · ‎07-18-2019

Mary W wrote:
Maria - I found the same thing today. Not sure if Google is screwed up or if the Freelancers actually copies my profile and then changed it. I tend to believe the first scenario, although this hasn't happened in the past.

I think there's something strange with Google.
To do the test, I looked for my text and someone appeared who "supposedly" had copied it, but when entering the profile, the text is different

Edited to add: Jennifer M seems to have found the most possible solution 🙂

cupidmedia · ‎07-18-2019

Martina P wrote:
Jennifer D wrote:
I'm currently recruiting for several new freelancers. When browsing profiles looking for potential freelancers to invite to one of my active job posts, I discovered two which have a nearly identical first paragraph. It is too specific for it to be a coincidence. I have flagged both their profiles for plagiarised content and linked to the other person in each report, but I'm wondering if there's anything else I can, or should, do?

UPDATE: One of them has now applied for my job. I'm considering asking them if they're aware of this other profile and why some of their content is identical, but I don't know which one is the "bad guy" here and I don't want to either scare off the plagiarised person or alert the plagiariser.
Just flag them all and avoid them. There are likely many many more who copied profiles, and the people they copied from might not even be on upwork. There's a lot of fraud going on.

The problem is that the job I'm recruiting for has a fairly small pool of potential freelancers, and the one who applied otherwise seems fantastic. If I hadn't seen the copied content, I would have immediately hired them for the job. But now I don't know if they were the plagiariser or the plagiarised and it throws doubt in to the decision. Both their profiles have been active for a while, they both have good JSS and have earned quite a bit on the site. So it's not like one is the "obvious" plagiariser.

renata101 · ‎07-21-2019

Jennifer D wrote:
Martina P wrote:
Jennifer D wrote:
I'm currently recruiting for several new freelancers. When browsing profiles looking for potential freelancers to invite to one of my active job posts, I discovered two which have a nearly identical first paragraph. It is too specific for it to be a coincidence. I have flagged both their profiles for plagiarised content and linked to the other person in each report, but I'm wondering if there's anything else I can, or should, do?

UPDATE: One of them has now applied for my job. I'm considering asking them if they're aware of this other profile and why some of their content is identical, but I don't know which one is the "bad guy" here and I don't want to either scare off the plagiarised person or alert the plagiariser.
Just flag them all and avoid them. There are likely many many more who copied profiles, and the people they copied from might not even be on upwork. There's a lot of fraud going on.
The problem is that the job I'm recruiting for has a fairly small pool of potential freelancers, and the one who applied otherwise seems fantastic. If I hadn't seen the copied content, I would have immediately hired them for the job. But now I don't know if they were the plagiariser or the plagiarised and it throws doubt in to the decision. Both their profiles have been active for a while, they both have good JSS and have earned quite a bit on the site. So it's not like one is the "obvious" plagiariser.

@Jennifer

I just want to say thanks so much for posting this from the client perspective (I want to write that in bold in 10,000 pt font!). Perhaps UW will begin to take it more seriously. Right now we can flag duplicate profiles, but it's a bit hit and miss whether the copied profiles are taken down or not.

What's sad is that, even if the freelancer you seem to like created his or her own material, the presence of the copied text on the second person's profile is now making you doubt what you're looking at. That's not the fault of the person who put up the original copy, but you no longer have any ideal who that is. This is extremely bad for both freelancers and clients. You have a history of hiring on UW so you have some confidence about hiring on the platfrom. If I were a new client, I'd find this a real turnoff and it might ultimately sway my decision about whether or not to hire on the platform. I'd really like it if clients could feel confident about hiring.

I hope someone higher up in the UW management ultimately ends up reading this and taking some notes.

lysis10 · ‎07-18-2019

Did they have the "Aussie Voice" title?

😄 😄 😄 😄 😄

sergio-soria · ‎07-18-2019

Maria T wrote:
I think there's something strange with Google.
To do the test, I looked for my text and someone appeared who "supposedly" had copied it, but when entering the profile, the text is different

In time Google will fix it. It's not that there is something strange with them, but they take their time to update changes once text is indexed. Probably the change was made recently. And if you want to see how something was before you can take a look at archive.org.

Jennifer D wrote:
One of them has now applied for my job. I'm considering asking them if they're aware of this other profile and why some of their content is identical, but I don't know which one is the "bad guy" here and I don't want to either scare off the plagiarised person or alert the plagiariser.

Jennifer, check their countries. English writing is usually a key. Those people come probably from other platforms where this copycat thing is very common and no-one cares. If I were you I would not hire any of them just in case. There are hundreds of good freelancers here, why to go with a fraud suspect?

cupidmedia · ‎07-18-2019

Sergio S wrote:
Maria T wrote:
I think there's something strange with Google.
To do the test, I looked for my text and someone appeared who "supposedly" had copied it, but when entering the profile, the text is different
In time Google will fix it. It's not that there is something strange with them, but they take their time to update changes once text is indexed. Probably the change was made recently. And if you want to see how something was before you can take a look at archive.org.

Jennifer D wrote:
One of them has now applied for my job. I'm considering asking them if they're aware of this other profile and why some of their content is identical, but I don't know which one is the "bad guy" here and I don't want to either scare off the plagiarised person or alert the plagiariser.
Jennifer, check their countries. English writing is usually a key. Those people come probably from other platforms where this copycat thing is very common and no-one cares. If I were you I would not hire any of them just in case. There are hundreds of good freelancers here, why to go with a fraud suspect?

That's true, Sergio, but in this particular case my pool of potential freelancers isn't very big (it's for a fairly niche language translation project). The proposal I received from one of these two is a very strong proposal, so I'm relucant to rule them out without solid cause.

m_terrazas · ‎07-19-2019

Jennifer D wrote:
Sergio S wrote:
Maria T wrote:
I think there's something strange with Google.
To do the test, I looked for my text and someone appeared who "supposedly" had copied it, but when entering the profile, the text is different
In time Google will fix it. It's not that there is something strange with them, but they take their time to update changes once text is indexed. Probably the change was made recently. And if you want to see how something was before you can take a look at archive.org.

Jennifer D wrote:
One of them has now applied for my job. I'm considering asking them if they're aware of this other profile and why some of their content is identical, but I don't know which one is the "bad guy" here and I don't want to either scare off the plagiarised person or alert the plagiariser.
Jennifer, check their countries. English writing is usually a key. Those people come probably from other platforms where this copycat thing is very common and no-one cares. If I were you I would not hire any of them just in case. There are hundreds of good freelancers here, why to go with a fraud suspect?
That's true, Sergio, but in this particular case my pool of potential freelancers isn't very big (it's for a fairly niche language translation project). The proposal I received from one of these two is a very strong proposal, so I'm relucant to rule them out without solid cause.

Perhaps knowing which of them created the profile first?
Send me a PM if you want.

luce-neidert · ‎07-19-2019

Last week, I found 3 identical profiles. The only variation was the name and the country they had studied in.

I was so surprised I didn't flag immediately. When I decided to find these profiles again in order to flag them, I couldn't remember how I had found these amazing triplets, so they may still be around.

colettelewis · ‎07-19-2019

Whether it is Google or Upwork, our profiles and overviews (plus details such as addresses and earnings) are being applied to other Upwork freelancers - even though those freelancers (perhaps in the same categories, such as translation) have profiles of their own. This very much reminds me of the awful time when oDesk decided to pirate our profiles by suggesting other freelancers in the same niche to clients.

The question of stolen profiles remains. I have lost count of the number of people who have stolen all or part of mine. The only answer is to set oneself to private.

wendy_writes · ‎07-19-2019

Jennifer, you might want to set up a brief chat with the two FLers. You're more than experienced in cutting thru the nonsense and making a good evaluation of the candidates. Your spiny sense of honesty and their command of English will probably answer your original question.

cupidmedia · ‎07-21-2019

Maria T wrote:
[snip]
Perhaps knowing which of them created the profile first?
Send me a PM if you want.

Thanksfor the offer Maria, I've got this information now 🙂