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taylordejesus
Community Member

Anyone seeing suspicious activity?

Hi everyone,

 

I've been using Upwork for a little over 2 years now to find work as a freelance writer. I've never really had an issue up until now. I've generally been able to get quite a few interviews, if not hires, but lately I seem to be getting nothing.

 

I've received 2 messages from clients in the past week and a half requesting that I add them on Facebook or Whatsapp, and the messages were almost identical to each other even though they were different client profiles. I didn't go for either, but just ignored their messages as their profiles were suspended.

 

Then, today, I was filling out proposals, and I saw 2 different job postings by 2 different clients that were very similar - they both had their budgets listed as $39 (an odd number that usually doesn't come up often), and one said they needed to hire 58 freelancers and the other 54 freelancers (even though they were both one-time jobs and not long-term).

 

Does anyone find these things to be suspicious, or am I just jumping to conclusions? I just want to make sure that I'm not wasting my time and connects applying for jobs that aren't real.

 

Also, does anyone know how they screen clients? Is it possible for people to be listing scam jobs?

 

Thanks for any replies!

3 REPLIES 3
yitwail
Community Member

Taylor, I shouldn't jump to conclusions without seeing the actual job posts, but any job that supposedly requires a lot of hires I would view with skepticism. I actually did complete one such job, but it was posted by a researcher looking to interview a number of freelancers for his project, so it made sense that there would be multiple hires. Perhaps a client could hire 4 or 5 freelancers on a trial basis, to choose who to hire for a long-term project, but not 54 or 58.

 

ETA: It's a clever scammer tactic in the sense that a freelancer may not apply for a job if she sees there are 20-50 applicants, unless the job specifies hiring more than 50 freelancers, but a freelancer has to be naive enough to fall for it.

__________________________________________________
"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
mtngigi
Community Member

Re: "Is it possible for people to be listing scam jobs?"

 

Have you never read any of the thousands of forum posts about this very thing. Do a search with the keyword "scam". That will answer your question.

AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Taylor, 


I was unable to identify the job posts that you are referring to on your post. I would recommend that you flag the posts as inappropriate so that the team receives it in their queue, and they can review it against their guidelines. 


~ Avery
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